


Falling Falling Stars

by not_poignant



Series: Fae Tales - AUs, Oneshots and More [19]
Category: Fae Tales - not_poignant, Original Work
Genre: Anxiety, Brainwashing and Conditioning, But not that soft, Child Sexual Abuse, Chronic Illness, Consent, Crielle is the Ultimate Warning, Depression, Disordered Eating, Efnisien is his own warning, Healing, Homophobic Language, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I lied this is actually literally THE SOFTEST THING I HAVE EVER WRITTEN, Implied/Referenced Incest, Incest, Internalized Homophobia, Intrusive Thoughts, Kink Negotiation, Long-term Abdominal Injury, M/M, Mental Illness, Past Suicide, Praise Kink, Probably a lot softer than you'd expect given it's Efnisien, Pure O, Sexual assault (past and poss. present), Slow Burn, Soft BDSM, Subdrop, Subspace, Suicidal Ideation, Therapy, Trauma Recovery, Unrequited Love re: Gwyn, Violence, Whump, animal abuse (past), discussions of consent, nonsexual bdsm, touch starved
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:40:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 50
Words: 288,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25401025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_poignant/pseuds/not_poignant
Summary: "Imagine me deciding to feel bad about everything I’ve ever done, and then imagine what kind of life I’ll have. Because I’m not brave enough to live in some fucked up eighteen-hundreds-style purgatory. I’d rather die. There’s no one who wants me, and there’s no one who will. Which is exactly what someone like me deserves, isn’t it?" A story about a broken boy, who is learning how not to break everything else around him.(No knowledge of any of the characters or other stories in the universe is needed to read this story!)
Relationships: Efnisien ap Wledig/Arden Mercury
Series: Fae Tales - AUs, Oneshots and More [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/70676
Comments: 3316
Kudos: 655





	1. Forty Five

**Author's Note:**

> I've honestly been thinking about writing a _Spoils of the Spoiled_ Efnisien spin-off for a while now, and decided to bite the bullet with it. Idk when updates will come because this is very much working outside of my schedule, and this is something I'm mostly doing because I just couldn't leave Efnisien alone after the ending. You can obviously expect a LOT of graphic content through Efnisien's violent, intrusive thoughts. I'm picking 'choosing to not use warnings' at this point because I just don't know what kind of content this story will have.
> 
> [Yes, there is absolutely a playlist.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7GCCSe1PiZ8D2apCHPVpyk?si=TnH6kwPhSDaAqP0Gv4vTqw)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re: Creator chose not to use warnings - no major character death, it's just that idk exactly how to tag for the rest of it, so I'm playing it safe. Check the bulk of the tags for content, and there are fRESH new warnings/tags per chapter.

Efnisien had forty four books in his plain grey melamine bookshelf. He used to have more, but Dr Gary found out that he’d bought some more true crime books during his bad patches, and encouraged him to throw them out. Efnisien placed them all in a metal bin in a shitty park and set them alight and someone called the police and Efnisien was sectioned against his will for forty eight hours for being resistant to arrest. Dr Gary vouched for him, got him out and threatened to remand him back to Hillview if he didn’t ‘pull it together.’

Now, he obsessed about buying true crime books, because he knew he shouldn’t.

‘It’s still a de-escalated obsession,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Obsessing about buying true crime books for an hour isn’t obsessing about killing someone. That’s progress, Efnisien.’

Dr Gary was about the only person in the planet who could say that, and Efnisien would only scoff at him fifty percent of the time.

_That’s progress, Efnisien._

Progress to what?

Efnisien sat at the cheapest IKEA table he could afford and stared into a room that had no windows and a grey couch. Efnisien didn’t care about colours – except red, the best colour, and he wasn’t supposed to own anything coloured red, not even a fucking pen – and he didn’t care about furniture. His parents had left him a decent stipend and he’d never touched it except to pay bond on his shitty apartment.

He worked four hours six days a week watching surveillance videos streaming to his computer on behalf of a big data company and fifteen hours a week transcribing academic lectures and recordings for one Professor, one Associate Professor, and one PhD student who could afford his rates. Dr Gary had found him the Associate Professor, and the rest of the work had come by word of mouth.

He thought about hurting animals intentionally multiple times a day, but never for more than a couple of minutes. Sometimes only a few seconds. He thought about killing the people he worked for even less. He thought about burning down the apartment building often.

He ate five times a day, because his stomach couldn’t handle large meals anymore. He ate porridge cooked with water twice a day. He was careful with too much raw fibre. If he remembered why he had to eat five meals a day, which was most days, he thought about shoving his fingers into his entrails like he’d done in the hospital after he’d been stabbed, and he splayed his hands across his belly and wished he could do it again.

It had been so visceral and soft and squishy, and it had hurt so fucking much. It had been the brightest thing in his life at the time. Like a flashlight in his eyes, but it was coming from his guts instead.

The nurses thought he’d been killing himself, and maybe he had been, because he wouldn’t have cared if he died. But he just wanted to know what it felt like to feel the wounds Crielle had made, to press his fingers in along the path of the knife, to hear the wet squelch and he’d press his hand to his belly and realise his breathing was getting shaky and he was getting aroused.

Dr Gary didn’t have him logging his intrusive thoughts because he had them too often. But he was meant to log when he had intrusive thoughts about hurting himself, hurting other people or animals for longer than five minutes.

Monday was bad. Efnisien owned forty four books and on the whiteboard tally sheet for the day on his fridge, he was up to fifty vicious, short little lines. At least four point one hours spent thinking about hurting himself, hurting others, hurting animals. Four point one six six six six six six recurring.

 _Six, six, six, six, six, six,_ Efnisien thought, blinking at the tally marks on the whiteboard. _Six, six, six, six, six, six._ On and on forever. _Six, six, six, six, six, six._ That’s what recurring meant.

Recurring like his intrusive thoughts. Exploding out of him into infinity. Unravelling like a ball of string with no end.

He knew it was a bad night.

He had forty four books.

Gwyn was supposed to see him today.

He was supposed to have forty _five._

*

He turned his phone in his hands. He had a few numbers now. Work numbers. Dr Gary’s number. Gwyn’s number. Some takeout numbers. The bank. Hillview. He had numbers. It was four in the morning and he was supposed to try and get eight hours of sleep a night because eight hours was the base requirement for someone with Pure O, even though he didn’t strictly meet the requirements of Pure O because he’d stopped being afraid of most of his intrusive thoughts as a child.

_Thanks, Crielle!_

‘Normally,’ Dr Gary had said, when Efnisien was still an inpatient and recovering from his gut wounds, ‘we would do standard ERP with you, but Exposure and Response Prevention therapy is largely designed for people who haven’t acted on their intrusive thoughts. You have.’

‘Which means I don’t have what you think I have, shithead.’

Dr Gary stood up and Efnisien opened his mouth to apologise and then bit down on his tongue as Dr Gary placed a second tick next to Efnisien’s name. He didn’t really want to apologise. He just didn’t want the fucking punishment.

‘You get to verbally abuse me three times per session, before you’ve violated the agreed upon boundary between us. Today is the second violation and the fifth incident of verbal abuse. Do you want to talk about it?’

_Shithead fuckface piece of shit asshole shit-stain faggot wanker._

Dr Gary sighed, and Efnisien stared ahead and knew one of his books would be taken from him. It wouldn’t be for long, and he could always choose which one, but he failed to see the importance of these petty games. For a moment, he imagined having Dr Gary bound in front of him, and then he imagined Dr Gary’s wrists and ankles chafing from ropes tied too tight, and he imagined picking a book and tearing out the pages slowly and stuffing them down Dr Gary’s throat as he choked, as he aspirated on his own fucking saliva, and one by one, Efnisien would just push pages down into his wet, dark-red gullet. One by one by one by one.

God.

 _‘This is the book I picked for you, Doc,’_ Efnisien would say as the paper crinkled in his fist, as he lovingly placed it into Dr Gary’s mouth, packing down the other wadded pages. _‘Did I make a good choice?’_

‘Are you having intrusive thoughts now, Efnisien?’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien stared at him, feeling glassy and unafraid, which was how he knew he didn’t have the stupid disorder that Dr Gary thought he had. He knew because he’d looked up Pure O. He was supposed to be _afraid_ of his intrusive thoughts, and he wasn’t. He wasn’t ever afraid of them. God he wanted it so badly. Dr Gary would probably be hot suffocating, drowning on the book he was going to force Efnisien to withhold from himself.

‘Efnisien, can you give me a number between one and ten?’

‘Eight,’ Efnisien choked out.

‘That’s good,’ Dr Gary said. ‘About you, me, or someone else?’

‘You.’

‘Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You don’t like talking about this subject. Are you having the intrusive thought still?’

Efnisien nodded.

‘Okay, I’m not going to talk to you more today about why I think you have Pure O, since you’re quite sensitive to that discussion. And we can talk about the content of your intrusive thought in a moment. Let’s see. Where were we before that? Can I talk to you about the medications I want to trial you on?’

Efnisien thought about pills and he thought about Crielle breaking them open into Gwyn’s food and he thought about shared smiles and feeling warm inside and was suddenly so fucking tired.

‘Yeah, Doc,’ Efnisien said closing his eyes. ‘It’s your session.’

Three years had passed since then. Three years, and now Efnisien saw Dr Gary as an outpatient in his way nicer offices in the rich part of town like he didn’t slum it with the broken kids on a regular basis. Dr Gary one day said Efnisien was well enough to be discharged and Efnisien had actually asked him to not do that. And then they’d needed months of dealing with the fact that Efnisien didn’t want to leave the centre. It took a whole month of Efnisien threatening to kill someone so he could go to jail and Dr Gary just calmly staring at him before they actually made any progress on it.

And then Dr Gary turfed him into the real world and hooked him up with a transcription job and saw him once a week. Sometimes twice a week. In a much nicer office. Dr Gary didn’t even turn down the photo of his pet dog anymore when Efnisien was in the room. God. Fucking idiot.

Efnisien turned his phone in his hands and tried to remind himself what he was supposed to do when he was having a bad day.

Eight hours of sleep? Fail.

Stay hydrated? Who fucking cared about that? But whatever, he’d had water.

Had all his meals? Sure had. Stupid small meals that his guts still struggled with, he should’ve at least gotten one finger into an intestine if he’d had the chance to make all of this worth it. The pain was distracting at the time. But not _that_ distracting. Fucking nurse. He could’ve killed her for stopping him. He wanted to.

Meditation? He hated doing it on days like this. It made everything worse.

Meds? He took his meds. He was a perfectionist with his meds. If he took them a few minutes late, it stressed him out. Hilariously, that was apparently a symptom.

He reminded himself that he hadn’t acted on the majority of his intrusive thoughts since he’d started treatment, and that he’d de-escalated many of them and that Dr Gary had called him responsive and Efnisien knew he wasn’t supposed to need reassurance, he really wasn’t, but Dr Gary had called him responsive to treatment.

It was okay to have reassurance that was realistic. No one could tell him that he wasn’t going to hurt or kill or harm anyone. But he could be told he was responsive to treatment.

‘I’m responsive to treatment,’ he said.

He thought about the tally marks on the whiteboard and about Gwyn’s text message saying that Augus was sick with the flu and he had to take care of him so he couldn’t come visit and he hated that it had been years since Gwyn had been a regular part of his life and sometimes it felt like Gwyn was the most intrusive thought of all.

He was supposed to have another book. That was all. Just one more book.

Dr Gary would say these days, his intrusive thoughts masked what he was really afraid of.

‘Shithead,’ Efnisien muttered, knees up to his chest and one arm wrapped around them as he turned his phone in his hand over and over again and scrolled between Dr Gary’s number and Gwyn’s.

Whatever.

_Whatever._

He wondered where Crielle was and what she was doing. Probably killing people.

‘Lucky bitch,’ he muttered.

*

Morning, and Efnisien made porridge with water and waited for the microwave to beep and then ate it with a dull spoon, while standing. His eyes felt scratchy. His computer waited for him. He’d had a laptop at first, but then he’d saved up for a decent desktop with a good mechanical switch keyboard, and that had boosted his typing speed to nearly one hundred and seventy words per minute with a ninety nine percent accuracy and that meant he could charge more.

He had some games installed. Mostly things that allowed him to kill people and animals and sometimes even his own character. He didn’t care about the names or titles of the games, he looked for things that people wanted banned, he looked for the games that weren’t supposed to exist and he bought them.

Dr Gary said that was de-escalating too. Doing it on the screen, instead of hurting real people. But Dr Gary wanted him to de-escalate further. Efnisien was meant to find some games that didn’t primarily reward violence.

The overhead bare bulb turned everything stark, and hid the fact that it was morning and the light outside was probably soft. Efnisien tucked a lock of blond hair behind his ear and he thought maybe, for once, he should go outside when he _didn’t_ have a medical appointment or desperately need to get toilet paper from the shops because he forgot to pay attention to what his apartment was supposed to have inside it.

Dr Gary would call it progress.

‘Dr Gary can suck my dick,’ Efnisien muttered as he ran water into the empty bowl. His guts churned. He imagined all the scar tissue in there, adhesions, and stared at the tally board. It was morning and he’d already wiped it fresh. He did not want to be putting a tally on there already. He hated it. The tallies made him feel like he was failing. He knew that was why Dr Gary made him put them up. Hooking into Efnisien’s perfectionism and need to have good grades, and using that against him.

Three years since the woman he loved stabbed him and the guy he loved went off with someone else to live some kind of happily ever after bullshit. Three years.

Shame they were both family members, but Efnisien figured if he was going to be a fuck up, he might as well add some incest in there too.

After a while he grabbed his apartment keys – key for the apartment, key for the door to the stairs, and that was it, because Efnisien didn’t drive, and no one else would trust him with a key – and pulled his shoes on and let himself out without trying to overthink it. He definitely wasn’t going to think about all the people he could kill and torture that he might see. God forbid he saw a cute Labrador puppy. Not that he’d done anything in years.

_Three years. Dr Gary would call it progress._

Technically, he could have forty five books if he bought another one himself. That was allowed. Just because it felt like a rule that Gwyn had to buy them for him, as a sign Efnisien existed in someone’s life aside from Dr Gary’s, didn’t mean that Efnisien couldn’t buy one for himself.

He was right, the morning light was soft, and Efnisien stopped dead beneath the sky and thought, bewildered, that maybe he’d forgotten what morning felt like.


	2. Green

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I like, warn for intrusive thoughts all over again? x.x Also: Additional tag/warning: hate speech (homophobia).

The first thing he noticed was that the park on his route was very green. He didn’t care about colours, except for red, but he noticed that anyway. The green felt nice. It was spring, and the grass was a good, healthy colour. He noticed it and actually felt something. It didn’t last long, and it was kind of insipid, but it left him feeling unsettled, like someone came in and stole away his regular brain that he’d been using all his life and put another person’s brain in there.

The one thing Dr Gary would never let him escape from, even in the beginning, was Efnisien’s perception of himself as being wholly evil.

Back then, his gut still miserable with pain even while he told everyone that he was fine, _really_ , he’d sit in the gross, picked at armchair and scowl at nothing while Dr Gary talked to him.

‘We know – you’ve admitted yourself – that you put your life on the line in order to save your cousin, Gwyn ap Nudd. For that and that reason alone, you were violently stabbed by your Aunt, cut off from presumably a millionaire’s inheritance, and remanded to the residential treatment facility here at Hillview just to access a stipend. You effectively saved your cousin. That is by every definition, a selfless act. A self-destructive one, but also selfless.’

‘ _Fuck_ you, you absolute fucking piece of trash,’ Efnisien said.

That was before Dr Gary had talked to him about how many instances of verbal abuse he’d allow per session, and Efnisien got away with calling him a piece of shit way more than three measly times.

Back then, they didn’t seem to care as much about how he’d hurt animals or how he’d hurt people and they always focused on the shit they weren’t supposed to be focusing on. It wasn’t that they didn’t _care_ that he’d hurt people and animals, they definitely didn’t leave him alone with any weapons, and he was never once allowed a bunkmate like nearly everyone else, but they just…didn’t constantly talk to him about it. Which, frankly, was what Efnisien had expected and was almost looking forward to.

Instead they focused on bizarre shit.

When do you feel happy? Why does hurting animals and people make you feel good? When was the last time you felt genuinely happy? When was the first time it felt good to hurt an animal? Was that the first time you hurt an animal?

 _No_ , but he wasn’t going to tell them that.

Except that he did tell them, eventually. Because Dr Gary always made him feel like he was succeeding at something when he was honest about shit, and he missed that feeling. He missed it and he hadn’t really gotten it properly since Crielle and _fucking_ hell, he knew all about transference and it was humiliating, but if this was the only way to get it…

He didn’t have her number, and she hadn’t contacted him again. He knew she never would. She hated him. He’d betrayed her.

So the park was green, and he thought he’d probably spent about two decades of his life not really being aware of things like that. The only things that mattered to him were making Gwyn happy, or torturing him, and the exhilarating rush that came from hurting others, or hurting himself.

‘I’m a sadist,’ Efnisien said in another session, two years ago in that still-shitty, still-the-same armchair. It was blue and gross.

‘No, you’re a sadomasochist.’

‘I’m a sadist to myself! So I’m a fucking sadist all round, Doc.’

‘No, you’re a sadomasochist. Efnisien, I know you want to identify primarily as a sadist, and you are definitely capable of extreme sadism, but you’ve told me yourself that you have been kind when the situation allowed it-’

‘I didn’t tell you I was _kind.’_

Dr Gary reached for Efnisien’s file – which was on the computer – and tabbed across and pointed to several different entries that he never allowed Efnisien to read. It was infuriating when Dr Gary did this. The fucker.

‘Here, the time after you cut open your cousin’s feet, you described an evening where you brought him all of your plush toys and put them around his head so that – and I quote – ‘they would keep him warm and make him feel less sad.’ You then told me that any toy that had had survived your destroying it was a toy that you generally cared about, and wanted in your room. So you sacrificed something you cared about-’

‘For like _one night.’_

‘So you sacrificed something you cared about, in order to make Gwyn feel-’

‘After I sliced his fucking _feet open,_ and then jerked off to it in the shower for like two fucking weeks after. Even Crielle thought I’d gone too far!’

‘So you sacrificed something you cared about, in order to-’

‘ _SHUT THE FUCK UP!’_ Efnisien was on his feet and his fists were clenched and he looked wildly around the room for literally _anything_. And then a ballpoint pen was in his hand and the nib was at Dr Gary’s neck and his knee was on Dr Gary’s thigh. And Dr Gary stared up at him calmly, like he didn’t believe Efnisien was capable, even though they both fucking knew he was.

‘If you don’t want me to finish that sentence,’ Dr Gary said calmly, ‘what are you supposed to say, Efnisien?’

Efnisien blinked at him, his hand was shaking. He could see all the blood, all the blood pouring from a wound that would be so easy to make. It would spurt with Dr Gary’s heart. Not his breaths, but his heart. And then it would spurt until there was no more pressure and then it would ooze and then it would stop and he’d be dead. He’d be dead.

‘Efnisien, can you give me a number between one and ten?’

‘Four,’ Efnisien said. He could be a five or a six, but it was hard to tell.

‘Very good,’ Dr Gary said, still like he didn’t fucking care that Efnisien wanted to jam the pen in his neck, or in his ear, or up through his nose and into his fucking brain. Efnisien was already getting hard just thinking about it. God it would feel awful. All of it would feel awful, it would be so good. ‘Efnisien, what are you supposed to say when you don’t like what I’m telling you?’

‘That I don’t like it,’ Efnisien said automatically, feeling strange.

‘Did you tell me that you didn’t like what I was saying?’

‘You fucking _knew_ I didn’t like it.’

‘Efnisien, if we sat here and made a list of everything you didn’t like me saying, I wouldn’t be able to talk to you at all. You tell me you don’t like something so that I have a heads up and can change my approach, or to flag when you’re feeling overwhelmed. I want you to put the pen back on the desk, please.’

‘Fuck you,’ Efnisien said, staring at him. ‘You don’t even think I’m capable anymore.’

‘You haven’t been violent to anyone for over nine months.’

Efnisien pressed the pen against Dr Gary’s neck, and it pushed in and made a blue smear. Dr Gary reached for his mobile phone calmly with his other hand, thumbed in the pin and had it ready probably to call the guards in or some shit. Efnisien had been put in isolation before and he fucking hated it. He thought he’d handle it fine the first time, but there was nothing worse in the world than being stuck with his own thoughts in that fucking room even if they never put him in there for longer than twelve hours, and usually no longer than six.

He reared back and flung the pen across the room, where it hit the wall, left a blue dot, and clattered to the floor.

‘Efnisien,’ Dr Gary said, ‘I want you to pick the pen up and put it back on my desk, please.’

‘Fuck you,’ Efnisien said, and heard his voice and realised from his tone that he was upset. He stood there, standing, and Dr Gary sat there, waiting, with his phone still in his hand. It took five minutes for Efnisien to unlock his body enough to walk over and grab the pen, and when it was back in his hand he thought about jamming it into Dr Gary’s ear and listening to the squelch and crunch and then yanking it out and feeling the resistance and then seeing blood well in his ear. ‘It’s possible to do an icepick lobotomy with a pen you know. But through the eyes, not the ear.’

‘Leucotome is generally the tool of choice,’ Dr Gary said drily.

‘But it’s _possible_ to do it with a pen.’

‘Yes, Walter Freeman would be impressed with your daring. Knowing him, he probably thought of it too.’

Efnisien snickered in spite of himself, and it was like something inside of him deflated. He walked back over and placed the pen on Dr Gary’s desk in the exact position it had been in before, and sat down on the blue armchair. He picked at it absently.

‘Number?’ Dr Gary said, putting his phone down.

‘Two,’ Efnisien said.

‘That’s great. A bit of a rollercoaster of a session, but you must know I will never let you say a statement as simple as ‘I’m a sadist’ and let it lie. Come on, Efnisien, you’ve had some practice with these sessions now. We don’t minimise what you’ve done, and we don’t-’

‘It is minimising though.’

‘It’s not,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I appreciate that you think it is. Do you think you’re afraid that we’re minimising it, because you’re certain that you’ll become untenably violent if you don’t keep reminding people how violent you are?’

Efnisien swallowed, his throat felt thick, maybe phlegm, or maybe he’d eaten something that disagreed with his stomach. It happened.

‘No,’ Efnisien said, his voice rusty.

‘Because being afraid that you’re going to be violent is both a symptom of your Pure O, and something we can manage. You know that your thoughts are not wholly in your control, but your actions are. You chose to pick up the pen and threaten me. You chose not to hurt me even though I could see that you wanted to. You chose to throw the pen rather than communicate with me in sentences. And you chose to pick it up and put it back on the desk. I am sure your thoughts had you doing a great many more violent things, but you didn’t hurt me, and that was your choice.’

‘Please shut up,’ Efnisien said, sinking his head into his hands. Dr Gary was being ruthless today.

‘No,’ Dr Gary said.

‘You’re a sadist,’ he said.

To his surprise, Dr Gary laughed. ‘Ah, well, you wouldn’t be the first to say that. But I’m very good at my job, Efnisien, and sometimes that means knowing when you’re ready to be confronted with some of these truths.’

Efnisien hadn’t felt ready to be confronted with anything that day nor any other day that Dr Gary decided to go after him. He was like a bull on fucking steroids convinced that Efnisien was the brightest red flag of all.

That was two years ago. And now the park was green and he knew, he just knew if he brought it up in therapy, Dr Gary would call it progress. Noticing a fucking park was _green._

He took a breath and made himself keep walking.

Whatever.

He angled towards the bookstore. It was thirty minutes away. After about twenty minutes, Efnisien’s gut started to throw up minor cramps. He grunted under his breath when he noticed them, and then thought about savouring the pain, and then decided that he didn’t want to.

The morning light was soft. It was soft on his fingers and his hands, it was soft on the tips of his ears. People walked past him like he was a normal person. A woman with two children walked past him, and he imagined punching his fist up into her so violently that he’d rip her guts out when he yanked his fist back. Bam, instant prolapse. She’d be completely unfuckable, except by people like him.

He tried not to look at her, and he didn’t make any eye contact at all with the kids.

His breathing was shaky when he crossed the road, and he realised that if he was back home, he’d need to put a tally on the board.

There was just a day where – if he was around other people – having those thoughts started freaking him out. It wasn’t even that he didn’t want to act on them, he was pretty sure he did. He just got freaked out, and his breathing unspooled in his chest and he felt like he was melting inside. Like he’d go to the toilet and shit out all of his guts in a bloody mess exactly like he felt like he was doing when he started eating food again and they still weren’t sure if he’d get to keep his spleen.

‘Shut up,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Shut up, shut up.’

Dr Gary would say it was a good thing. Getting uncomfortable or anxious or afraid of his thoughts was actually the more truthful manifestation of his Pure O in the first place, and they could deal with that. Efnisien had strategies to deal with that.

Like telling himself that they were just intrusive thoughts and he didn’t have to act on them even if they were distressing. Even though telling himself those things made him feel so fucking weak, so sure they’d misdiagnosed him.

Apparently being obsessed with misdiagnosis was also a symptom, and it was flagged in his file. So whenever he started rambling about how he definitely didn’t have Pure O and he’d _know_ if he had it and actually he was just fucking _evil_ , they never ever let him say it without disagreeing with him.

He was shaking his hand over and over again, twitching it up and down and up and down and didn’t realise until he got a _look._ And then he hissed between gritted teeth and almost wanted to turn around and sprint after the dude and rip his hair out and fucking…fucking smash his ribs to pieces just to prove something.

A deep breath when he got to the small boutique bookstore. He stepped inside of it. The bell chimed. He hated the sound.

‘Welcome to The Cosy Book Corner!’ a spirited man from the counter said. Efnisien looked up at him and then hesitated just inside the store.

‘ _Fuuuuuuck,’_ he said, then shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘That’s a hell of a name.’

The man grinned sheepishly. He had the kind of face that Efnisien would love to ram his knee into. It meant he had a cute and babyish face. He wasn’t a teenager, but he would definitely get carded whenever he went to a pub.

‘You were the one who came into the store,’ the man said. ‘Looking for a book?’

‘Yeah.’

‘On anything in particular?’

‘I literally do not give the smallest, remotest shit,’ Efnisien said flatly. The man hesitated for a moment, but didn’t actually look offended, which Efnisien was already curious about. Because most people got offended by Efnisien in minutes, except his family, and Dr Gary. And sometimes some of the kids who were at Hillview, who just took it in their stride and had seen and experienced worse.

‘Oh, see,’ the man said, ‘that sounds like you’ll be easy to get a book for, but I think that’s actually a challenge. Fiction or nonfiction?’

‘Nonfiction.’ Efnisien looked around the store and realised it had an okay set up. Kind of nice. Maybe cosy. Whatever the hell that meant. The kind of place people would go to, to feel safe in. God Efnisien could really fuck some people up in a place like this. ‘Not true crime.’

‘Got it, that stuff creep you out, huh?’

‘Ha…yeah, something like that.’ More like it was inspirational and that was not a direction he was supposed to be going in. He wondered what friendly soft-cheeked-but-still-not-terrible-looking dude would say if Efnisien told him that he’d stabbed a puppy before.

‘Hard science or soft science?’

‘What the fuck?’ Efnisien said.

‘I’m Arden, by the way. And I mean, do you want the humanities and psychology and self-help books? Or do you want like botany and zoology and chemistry and physics?’

‘Oh, the last one,’ Efnisien said.

‘See? I _knew_ you’d be a challenge,’ Arden said, winking at him.

‘I literally could pick out any book in here, you’re the one making it a challenge.’

‘Aw, fine, but it’s been so dead this morning. Okay, give me one more request, grumpy guts.’

‘Like what?’ Efnisien said.

‘I don’t know,’ Arden said, absently moving some postcards in a stand. ‘Subject. Book colour. Publisher. Year. Whatever you want, I like a-’

‘Green,’ Efnisien said abruptly. ‘I want it to have a green cover.’

Arden’s eyes widened like he was pleased and surprised all at once, and Efnisien stood there feeling like this was so fucking stupid. Arden’s shirt said ‘I like books more than people’ in orange text on black. He wore a long-sleeved flannel shirt in orange and yellow. It didn’t go with his pale complexion. Dude couldn’t dress himself. Fucking asshole nerd.

‘See? Now we’re getting somewhere. Okay, let me see… Hard sciences, and a green cover.’

Arden walked past him, and Efnisien watched him go. He was short. He couldn’t be that much older than Efnisien. Did he own the store? He couldn’t own a bookstore, could he? He was too young for that.

‘Here we go,’ Arden said cheerfully. ‘Book on orchids has a green spine, and there’s this other one on deep sea zoology that has this amazing green cover. Personally I was expecting blue for the theme, but they pulled it off, look.’

Efnisien took both of the books and stared at them. He handed the orchid one back automatically. Not because he didn’t want it, but because he could only bring himself to buy one.

‘How much does it cost?’

‘Sticker’s on the back, but it’s non-fiction, so probably a bit. You didn’t give me a budget,’ Arden said, winking again. And it was almost, almost fun. It was almost like bantering with Gwyn back home.

‘Are you a fag?’ Efnisien said bluntly.

Arden’s spine straightened, his shoulders tensed, and Efnisien slowly drew a predatory breath through his nose and thought it would be easy. It’d be so fucking easy.

‘Because I’m not a fucking fag, dickface, and I don’t want you flirting with me. Get off my dick.’

A long silence, and Efnisien saw the moment that Arden’s perplexed hurt expression vanished into almost nothing. Like he’d never had an expression on his face in his life. His brown eyes went dead, there was no other word for it. Efnisien clutched the book harder with his fingers. He’d seen that in Hillview, and it was like the biggest fucking red flag there was. Whatever predatory thing he’d been sucking into his sore, tense gut, vanished.

‘As it happens, I _am_ a fag,’ Arden said quietly and evenly. ‘And you are obviously a homophobic bigot. I wasn’t flirting with you. You’re not my type.’

‘Sure I’m not,’ Efnisien said automatically, like reading from a script.

‘You’re hostile, creepy, furtive and behave like someone who hasn’t been in a bookstore before. You don’t care about your hair and your clothing is old and unkempt, even if it _looks_ clean. Now, do you want the book or not?’ Arden’s face bloomed back to life again, and he offered a winning smile.

Efnisien stared at him, feeling queasy. He handed the book over, and Arden took it, and then made a show of wiping his fingers several times over the place where Efnisien had held it, as though it was dirty. Efnisien waited for the spike of outrage, but instead he felt unsettled and gross and weird. He couldn’t draw a full breath. Not a single one. He wasn’t panicking, because he was used to the feeling, but his guts hurt more than normal and now he just wanted to get the fuck home again.

He paid for the book and watched as Arden slipped it into a paper bag with his receipt, bright and open and friendly-looking. Efnisien couldn’t get that dead look from before out of his head. It didn’t always mean the person was going to fuck him up, it could mean other stuff, but it still meant _something._

Arden handed him the paper bag and Efnisien took it, wondering why his hatred wasn’t kicking into overdrive. He stood there for long minutes, feeling stupid. Feeling something building in his gut and his throat, like he was going to puke right there on the counter.

‘I’m a fag too,’ Efnisien said.

He turned and booked it, but he didn’t leave fast enough to miss Arden’s expression of puzzlement. Which would’ve been hilarious if it wasn’t fucking humiliating. Besides, he didn’t even know if he was gay. He probably wasn’t gay. Having a boner for his dude cousin and his _Aunt_ and for fucking hurting living things probably made him something else entirely.

Efnisien pressed the book to his chest, the paper bag crinkling and felt fucking hideous. He spent the entire walk home imagining what awful things he’d do to those kids he saw before, not caring how many fucking tally marks he’d have to put on that goddamn whiteboard.


	3. Threshold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am like, idek how to describe why I'm so hooked into this fic at the moment but I am. We'll get more Arden soon I promise. Right now it's Dr. Gary time.
> 
> My official author's note: Sometimes Dr Gary pushes too hard. More homophobic hatespeech.

What Efnisien learnt from his green book was that most of the things in the deep sea were either scavengers of dead shit, or they were engaging in high tech bio-warfare against each other in a ruthless kill-or-be-killed kind of fight in a darkness so deep that it had never seen sunlight. At first, Efnisien was delighted by this, and he felt the same rush he felt while reading true crime books. Fucking nature being as disgustingly destructive as possible but with neon colours and infrared lights and everything.

But that night he slept badly, he woke up from nightmares feeling like maybe he was the Mariana Trench and maybe all that shit fought away inside of him and he wouldn’t know and he couldn’t do anything about it because they couldn’t get submarines that far down to explore it properly. People were better at exploring the goddamn moon.

He thought about the bookstore and that kid, and stared at the forty fifth book in his bookcase and wanted to throw it out because Gwyn hadn’t bought it for him. But he liked the book. But Gwyn hadn’t bought it for him.

But he liked the book.

But…

An hour of that and he didn’t know if it counted as an intrusive thought or not. Probably not. Because he didn’t think anything violent.

That Thursday he went to see Dr Gary. Precisely four pm, the last client on Thursday, and he was never, ever late. Sometimes if he got there early, he walked around. This time he sat in the waiting room and stared at nothing and picked at his shirt sleeve while the receptionist typed a measly eighty words a minute if that. That kid at The Cosy Fucking Book Corner had criticised his clothing, and Efnisien stared at his sleeve and thought yeah, okay, it was crappy.

Efnisien had stopped wearing expensive stuff in Hillview because it wasn’t really allowed. And then he’d gotten out and the An Fnwy mansion had already been sold and all his clothing sold with it. All his possessions. Everything that he’d thought of as his, and all of it was gone.

But he’d also never really cared about fashion. As far as he was concerned, clothing was the camouflage he put on to convince people he was rich and trustworthy. It was honey, a bait that worked every time. Crielle taught him that his body didn’t really matter, except as a lure. He’d draw people to him with a good leather jacket or some nice boots, and people would come to him and want some of that richness to rub off on them, and instead they’d have to deal with Efnisien making them cry instead.

Really all anyone needed were some shirts, two pairs of jeans, a pair of sneakers, and a good all weather jacket, socks and underwear. That was something Gwyn used to say. It turned out to be true. Also Efnisien just didn’t care. The size he automatically reached for didn’t fit him properly anymore. He’d lost a ton of weight and he was no longer fit and toned. He was sedentary and skinny, shirts hung off him, and his hipbones annoyed him if he rolled over onto his stomach.

But he couldn’t bear foods high in fat anymore, and he couldn’t eat large meals anymore, and he’d never much cared about food in the first place. The fact was, sometimes Efnisien swapped Gwyn’s plate with his own while Crielle wasn’t looking. Not often, but sometimes. Crielle didn’t label leftovers in the fridge to let people know what was Gwyn’s and what belonged to everyone else, and she sometimes forgot to give Efnisien a heads up. It didn’t happen often, but he’d eaten poisoned food intended for Gwyn and while he found it kind of hilarious, it left him thinking that eating was more than it was cracked up to be.

He didn’t _hate_ it, he just didn’t care about it much.

Like everything else, it was grey.

‘Efnisien?’ Dr Gary said, peering at him from behind his office door. He said it like he’d called Efnisien’s name once already.

‘Hey, Doc,’ Efnisien said, standing and swinging towards him without thinking. His gut hurt. It kind of always did. Some of it didn’t heal well, and they talked about adhesions and he was supposed to start some meds for them but he didn’t like meds. He didn’t like morphine and he didn’t like fucking oxy and he hated tramadol.

‘Can you give me a number?’ Dr Gary said, probably because Efnisien was being a fucking space cadet in his waiting room.

‘Like a one,’ Efnisien said.

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, I can think about other fucking things and stop paying attention because of them, can’t I?’

‘Of course,’ Dr Gary said easily, closing the door behind them and moving to his own seat. ‘What other things were you thinking about?’

Efnisien’s jaw set and he was already mad. All week he’d been thinking that Dr Gary would maybe be proud of him for going to the bookstore on his own, and now he was here and remembered he’d still be dealing with Dr Gary, who had a PhD in fuckery.

‘Do I wear shit clothes?’ Efnisien said. ‘I do, right? I didn’t used to always dress like this. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Like who the fuck cares what I wear?’

‘Do you care?’ Dr Gary said.

‘ _No.’_

‘Did someone say something?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, squinting, because he knew Dr Gary could tell that he was lying.

‘Are you sure?’

‘God,’ Efnisien said, sliding down the armchair – this one way more comfortable than the one in Hillview. ‘I went out to get a book. Gwyn cancelled.’

Dr Gary twitched like he wanted to turn and make a note, but at the last minute he stopped himself. Efnisien stared at him, smirking, then gestured to the computer.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘I know you want to.’

Dr Gary turned immediately and typed something onto his laptop.

A year ago they’d had a conversation about it. That day, Dr Gary had his laptop on his lap, he was typing away at it almost constantly. He didn’t do that every session, but he always made at least one or two notes and Efnisien hated it. He hated that he couldn’t see what Dr Gary was writing, that Dr Gary seemed to care more about the notes than Efnisien’s thoughts about shit, and finally he’d hunched into his chair – the old crappy blue chair – and folded his arms.

‘I hate that you do that,’ he’d said. ‘Fucking remember something for a change.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Dr Gary said. ‘Efnisien, it’s professional practice for a physician to take notes on their patient. It helps me be a better doctor for you.’

‘You have a dodgy fucking memory and you care more about pathologising me on your laptop than you do about talking to me.’

‘Why do you think that?’ Dr Gary said, tilting his head.

The famous fucking head tilt.

But in the end, Dr Gary had compromised after three back-to-back sessions talking about why Efnisien hated it so much. Dr Gary would only take notes if they were really significant, and he’d remember everything else and write notes at the end. Every now and then, he could tell Dr Gary would remember something but was desperate to write it down anyway, and now he felt kind of weirdly satisfied that Dr Gary thought Efnisien going to a bookshop was important enough to make an in-session note for.

‘What was it?’ Efnisien said. ‘That Gwyn cancelled? Or that I went to a bookshop?’

‘Both,’ Dr Gary said, smiling. ‘How have your tallies gone this week?’

Efnisien slid a little further down the chair. He did _not_ want to be here and he did _not_ want to talk about anything at all. He chewed on the inside of his cheek and then looked around the room, desperate for something else to focus on. But all he saw in his mind were all those black tallies.

‘Bad,’ Efnisien said finally. ‘The day he cancelled, and the day after, and the day after that. And then I guess not as bad.’

‘Where in that run of days did you go to the bookshop?’

‘The bookshop didn’t make the tally count better,’ Efnisien said defiantly.

Dr Gary just waited. And looked at him. He wore nice clothes, Efnisien realised. He wore pale blue shirts, and he wore a tie when he wasn’t at Hillview, and today it had pale and dark blue stripes. His trousers were grey. His shoes were black and shiny. It was utterly pedestrian, but it was still nicer than what Efnisien was wearing.

They’d be more interesting if blood was seeping into them. Efnisien pursed his lips as he tried to think of the best way to make that happen, then frowned at himself.

He didn’t have to _try_ to think of the best way to do those things. He just knew. Why was he trying?

‘Efnisien? Can you give me a number?’

‘Fuck off!’ Efnisien said, glaring at him. ‘I’m allowed to just think!’

‘You are,’ Dr Gary said. ‘However we’ve agreed upon a protocol whereby you rate your intrusive thoughts on a scale of-’

‘ _One.’_

‘I’m going to ask you something that you’re not going to like me asking,’ Dr Gary said, which meant he knew that Efnisien would fucking hate it. Great. Fucking great. Efnisien’s eyes drifted to the cup that held all the pens and he stared at them all. The ballpoint pens, at least five, enough to stab them into several orifices. Dr Gary followed his gaze and his lips twitched like he wanted to smile, but he didn’t.

‘Number?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Maybe a three now,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘That’s not entirely surprising. Efnisien, after the three tally days that you considered bad, have you found yourself having less intrusive thoughts than usual? Do you think Gwyn cancelling has-’

‘No,’ Efnisien said quickly, his eyes widening. ‘No, it has nothing to do with him.’

‘Okay,’ Dr Gary said, in that way that meant, _Sure, I’ll let you keep thinking that for now, you’ll get on my level eventually._ It was his most annoying tone of voice. Even more annoying than when he was being all stern.

‘It has nothing to do with him cancelling. He has to keep coming.’

‘Tell me why you decided to go to the bookshop.’

Efnisien tore his eyes from the pens and swallowed, and then eventually launched into all of it, because talking about going to the bookshop was _way_ better than whatever Dr Gary was heading towards. It took a surprising amount of time to narrate, given it really was just a walk to the store, a walk back, and one quick encounter. Efnisien felt tired at the end, he remembered what it felt like to hold the book in its paper bag, remembered that kid dusting off the place where Efnisien had touched it, like Efnisien was a pollutant, which wasn’t _inaccurate._

‘I’m tired,’ he said abruptly.

‘You haven’t been sleeping well?’

‘I don’t sleep great,’ Efnisien said, shrugging. ‘No, I’m just tired. Telling dumb stories is exhausting.’

‘You did something exhausting,’ Dr Gary said, and Efnisien’s muscles locked up. ‘You overcame moderate agoraphobia and your dependence on Gwyn buying you books, to seek one out yourself. You encountered multiple intrusive thought triggers, interacted with a stranger with some success, and while you had worse intrusive thoughts than usual on the way home, returned home with a book that you’d purchased for yourself. That’s significant, Efnisien. That’s significant progress. I’m impressed.’

Efnisien said nothing. He was still tense. He didn’t know how to describe the sensation of needing those words so badly that he’d put himself through a million Dr Gary sessions just to get a single sentence like that, and how much he hated hearing them because he just kept seeing all the ways Dr Gary was wrong. All the ways Dr Gary was letting him off the hook. But if he pointed that out, Dr Gary would get on his case about it.

‘Did you like the book?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Sort of. It was good at first. And then I dunno, depressing. Do you think Crielle will ever come back?’

Dr Gary tensed then, and Efnisien looked up and made eye contact, realising that the non sequitur he’d made was even more of a leap than usual.

‘Would you like her to come back?’ Dr Gary said quietly.

‘I mean she hates me,’ Efnisien said, looking away from him again.

‘Perhaps you want it to be like it was?’ Dr Gary suggested.

‘I mean…’

Three years ago, it was so easy to say that he wanted everything to be like it was. He harped on about it all the time. He said that he regretted helping Gwyn, and that he should’ve just sold him out, or better yet, killed him with his own bare hands. He’d say over and over again that he wanted to be back in that house with Crielle and Gwyn, and Dr Gary would say over and over again that it was impossible, and that Efnisien couldn’t live in the past, and that Efnisien was the one who had made it impossible in the first place.

And every time he said it, Efnisien felt like he’d been stabbed all over again. It didn’t matter if Dr Gary also said it was understandable that he wanted things to be like they were, it didn’t matter.

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said finally.

‘You don’t know?’

‘I don’t…think so?’

Efnisien stared ahead, confused. Didn’t he want that? When was the last time he’d thought about wanting to live with Crielle? Wasn’t that what he was supposed to want?

‘Uh,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I mean…I do. I think.’

‘You don’t have to know,’ Dr Gary offered. ‘It’s okay to not know the answers to things. Sometimes that’s better than feeling like you need to be decisive or absolutist. You know better than anyone that it’s possible to want something, not want it, and not know about it at the same time.’

‘That ol’ cognitive dissonance.’

‘That’s right,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You do look tired today. Has Gwyn rescheduled with you?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘I mean he did when he cancelled. He’s good like that. Always gives me a date and a time. Next week, unless Augus isn’t better.’

Efnisien had nothing to say after that, and Dr Gary didn’t prompt him with a question. In the silence that followed, Efnisien found himself reaching across an empty nothingness for the solace of what he normally thought about, blood and torture and guts and violence. But it all slipped out of his fingers and he felt sick, uncertain, because technically that’s what Dr Gary wanted and Efnisien knew he kind of wanted that too, but also he wasn’t anything without those thoughts and he could feel how empty and deep and hollow he was – the fucking Mariana Trench – without them.

‘Efnisien, can you give me a-?’

‘-Do you think I’m not a person?’

‘I think you’re a fully-fledged human being who’s having to learn some formative skills that you didn’t get to pick up at appropriate intervals during your development, so you’re picking up some of them now and working very hard to do so. So, yes, I think you’re a person.’

‘Like a blank chalkboard?’

‘No, I think you’re a person,’ Dr Gary said firmly. ‘Why do you think that you’re not a person?’

‘I didn’t tell you that _I_ didn’t think I wasn’t a person,’ Efnisien said, just to be a shit. ‘I asked you what _you_ thought. Thanks for telling me, Doc. We are fully copacetic.’

‘When are you going back to get another book?’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien scowled, and when his eyes darted to Dr Gary’s, he could see the glint in Dr Gary’s eyes that wasn’t one hundred percent steady. Sometimes Dr Gary reacted to Efnisien’s baiting with his own. Not for the first time, Efnisien wondered what Dr. Gary’s dissonance was like. After all, he spent his days convincing teen pedophiles that they didn’t need to act on their urges anymore. Efnisien thought he was pure evil and then he’d gone to Hillview and learned that, well…

His mind abruptly shied away and he shivered. No point thinking about the kinds of people in Hillview. Most of them were fine. And he got his own room. So it was fine. And the rest of it didn’t matter.

‘I don’t know if you heard the part of the story where I called the dude a fag, but I can run through it again, if you want. Maybe you’re not familiar with the abbreviation and you’d prefer me to say _faggot._ ’

‘Do you think you were trying to protect him from yourself?’

‘What?’ Efnisien said, staring at Dr Gary in revulsion. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Do you think that you noticed that you were having a mostly good and successful exchange, and then realised that it was going well, and responded in a way that would make him lose interest in you as a person? Hostility can hurt people on the receiving end, but you know for a fact that there are things that you can do to people that hurt worse, don’t you? And you’ve not done any of those things for three years, but you still feel the temptation. Perhaps you chose to hurt him with hostility, because you wanted to keep him safe.’

Efnisien’s hand dropped down to his gut, and he hated that Dr Gary’s eyes dropped with the movement and he fucking noticed and twitched towards the laptop like he wanted to write that down.

Efnisien turned and stared at the pens. And then abruptly, without even really thinking about it, his mind loose and floaty, he reached for the framed photo of Dr Gary’s dog and smashed it down on the desk to shatter the glass. He was going to stab someone, either Dr Gary or himself, he hadn’t decided _._

Nothing happened. He stared at the photo frame in confusion, and Dr Gary leaned towards him and pulled the photo from his numb hand and put it back on the desk.

‘It’s Perspex, not glass,’ Dr Gary said. ‘It doesn’t shatter.’

‘One day,’ Efnisien said hoarsely, ‘I’m gonna fucking kill you.’

‘Perhaps. But we have three years of you having never hurt me, and a lot of empty threats, so I’ll take my chances.’

Efnisien was shaking, and he was…he was…

He stared at a plant in the corner of the room.

He was upset.

They weren’t empty threats if Efnisien had really _hurt_ people before. And Efnisien hated feeling like Dr Gary was almost daring him to do something, just to prove – as he’d proven before – that Efnisien wouldn’t. Because Efnisien felt like a liar and a fool, but also confused, because he _had_ hurt people, he’d hurt people and animals, he’d hurt _Gwyn,_ he’d jerked off to people crying or looking at him in confusion or staring down at the blood he’d drawn, he’d fucking hurt people and it used to be so easy and where the fuck did it go? _Where_ did it go?

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said, and his tone of voice made Efnisien feel even more out of sorts. Softer. Like Efnisien was worth softer. ‘Can you name five things in the room for me?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said.

‘Please, would you try?’

_‘No,’_ Efnisien said, his voice shaking just like the rest of him.

‘I think you’ve had a very difficult and challenging week, not just externally, but also internally, and I think it’s time to get you feeling a bit more grounded. I should have done this earlier, and I apologise. Can you name five things in the room for me?’

Efnisien didn’t look and rattled off: ‘Plant, dog photo, five blue pens, blue striped tie, black shiny shoes.’

‘Good,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Can you tell me four things you can hear?’

‘Clock behind me, my breathing, your breathing, receptionist typing. Her speed’s fucking slow, by the way.’

‘Yes, well, it would be deeply unethical of me to hire you as my receptionist, no matter how great your typing speed is.’

Efnisien snickered in spite of himself, and when he looked, Dr Gary was also smiling. It felt warm, like morning light.

‘You want me to tell her how slow her typing speed is?’ Efnisien said. ‘Because I could. You wouldn’t have to do it, I could do it for you. I’d enjoy doing that.’

‘I’d prefer you didn’t. But do you want to explain to me why you feel offering to hurt someone for me, would earn my good favour?’

_‘You,’_ Efnisien said, feeling choked up all over again. A rush through him like fucking ice, and his guts seized up. Dr Gary’s eyes widened, like he’d realised that he’d just fucking stepped _in it,_ because that wasn’t something they talked about _ever._ Efnisien was already standing and already seeing the rush of images, one after the other, blood and guts and the sound of bones cracking and the wheeze in someone’s lungs as they died and he spun towards the door. It turned out all the rot was right there waiting for him, it wasn’t over some abyss after all.

‘Efnisien, please don’t leave.’

‘Fuck you,’ Efnisien said. ‘I’ll see you in a week.’

‘Efnisien, we’ve talked about this, I’m not perfect and I’m going to make mistakes sometimes and it’s better when we can talk through them together. I’m asking-’

‘Send me back to Hillview if you’re so fucking worried, you absolute fucking _cunt,_ ’ Efnisien spat, and then slammed the door on him and walked out of the clinic with his hands jammed into his jeans and his breathing out of whack _._

He couldn’t remember getting home, and he stayed up all night transcribing, listening to the dry academic words of a professor in his ear. He didn’t trust himself to do anything else without ripping someone apart.


	4. Gwyn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Relatively graphic memory of sexual assault with Efnisien as the perpetrator. Like I say in the tags, Efnisien is his own warning.
> 
> How're y'all reading this and commenting I love y'all in this Chili's tonight

‘Efnisien, I owe you an apology. I pushed too hard last week, and with not enough sensitivity to your boundaries because I was excited at your progress, which doesn’t justify my actions. I’d like to talk about how we can improve this process for you. I know situations like last week are unavoidable, it’s not the first time you’ve walked out, after all. But let’s do what we can to make sure you’re getting the appropriate care you need. I’d like to also make a note of the fact that you didn’t try and hurt me.’

That was some welcome to therapy. Efnisien grimaced.

‘I tried to shatter your picture so I could hurt you with the glass.’

‘You didn’t actually try to hurt me, you tried to shatter a photo frame. It doesn’t matter if your thoughts told you that you were _going_ to hurt me, all you did was treat an object with violence. That’s inappropriate behaviour which we’re actively working towards changing, but on our spectrum, allowable given the circumstances at least for now. So I’d like to make a note of the fact that you didn’t try and hurt me, despite – I’m certain – you feeling rightfully hurt and angry in the moment. You may not want to hear it, but-’

‘I don’t.’

Dr Gary had his mouth open like he was about to talk over Efnisien and then he closed it and tilted his head. ‘All right. I might say it later. How can I make this process better for you?’

‘You can’t.’

‘Come on, Efnisien, you know how this works. I want to prevent you from feeling more distress than you have to. I know these sessions are always going to be challenging, that’s our work together, but I think it’s time to revisit our boundaries. It’s normal for boundaries to change.’

Efnisien stared at him and felt uneasy and jittery, like he’d had three espressos. He did that once. He ordered three espressos straight and drank them and then that night – a Saturday, he remembered he’d worn a white tux and fake reading glasses and he’d looked boss as fuck, ready to hunt – he’d gone to a function with Crielle and Lludd and he’d cornered Melissa, who was only a year older than him and he’d only been fourteen at the time, and put his hand up between her soft thighs while she stared at him with those wide, wide doe eyes, trembling, and he imagined what it must feel like for her and he’d felt dizzy and drunk and high on it. Just fucking _high_ on it. And he didn’t even want to put his fingers in her, he just wanted to grab her and make her realise that no one was fucking safe. She would never be fucking safe. And watching the moment she realised that her Mommy and Daddy were on the other side of the room and no one was coming to save her made his heart feel like it was pounding right out of his chest.

‘Efnisien, I need you to give me a number between one and ten, please?’

‘Eight,’ Efnisien said hoarsely. He realised his breathing was shallow and quick. When he used to think of that memory he’d get aroused, but now his gut hurt, probably because he was breathing so fast.

‘Good, okay. Let’s talk about the content of the intrusive thought.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Hm. Is the intrusive thought something you want to do? Or something you’ve done? You can say the number one if it’s the former, and-’

‘Two.’

‘Do you want to be thinking about this right now? You don’t look like you’re enjoying it.’

Efnisien stared at Dr Gary, felt like he was staring through his blue, blue eyes into his fatty, lump of a brain behind. All those neurons. So easy to stop. So easy to make them stop.

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said, voice sounding foggy. ‘It’s all pretty close to the surface lately, isn’t it? Let’s run through some grounding exercises.’

‘I don’t want to,’ Efnisien said roughly.

‘I know,’ Dr Gary said, and for a moment his voice held something that Efnisien’s mind reached for, bent towards, but it was elusive and he was still stuck staring past Dr Gary’s eyes and thinking of Melissa and the little breaths she’d made and how he’d done that right there at the party and he’d been proud and later he’d told Crielle and she’d cupped her hands around his cheeks and pressed her forehead to his and said she was _so so proud_ but that next time if he really wanted he could go a bit further and _You would be amazed what you can get away with, my precious darling boy. Remember, we’re always here to protect you. I’ll love you no matter what you do to them._

Efnisien made a rough sound, and Dr Gary moved forwards in his chair and snapped his fingers in Efnisien’s peripheral vision. His gaze darted in that direction, and Dr Gary said something about naming five things he could see and so Efnisien had to _look._

‘Start with my fingers,’ Dr Gary said firmly.

‘Your fingers,’ Efnisien said.

‘Just four more now, you can do it.’

It took what felt like years to notice the cabinets, and then two hardback books, and then the photo frame because he’d tried to shatter it last time, and then Dr Gary’s tie, which was a solid dark blue today. He felt sick. He was supposed to feel _good._

‘What’s happening to me?’ he said.

‘Sometimes breakthroughs feel bad,’ Dr Gary said quietly. ‘I wish they didn’t. It’s not very fair, but sometimes they do. Can you name four things you can hear? Start with my voice.’

‘Your voice,’ Efnisien said automatically. And then he ran through the rest of the grounding exercises with Dr Gary feeling a bit more like he was in the room, in the chair. When he was more aware of himself, he realised he had a hand clutching his gut, and the other was gripping the armrest.

‘It doesn’t feel as good to remember anymore,’ Efnisien said finally, feeling like Dr Gary had better feel fucking grateful for that, because lord knew he didn’t want to say it. But that was the kind of shit he was meant to say. That was what working together was.

Dr Gary said nothing. Efnisien swallowed, feeling like his stomach was wedged up into his lungs the wrong way. After a while he slumped and stared at the plant. He wanted to shred its leaves.

‘Sometimes,’ Dr Gary said, ‘what we find with people who have intrusive thoughts with intense content all the time, or most of the time, is that they grow accustomed to them. But it’s a bit like having headphones on, blaring music at high volume all the time. Just because you’re used to it, doesn’t mean it isn’t shocking to your system to have it happening nonstop. Then, when they start happening less, you experience the shock of them and realise that it’s actually – within the metaphor – very loud music and you’re not sure you want it blaring in your ears after all. And it can become distressing.’

‘Okay.’

‘But, I want to point out that this case is complicated, because you were coerced into-’

‘I fucking _wasn’t.’_

‘Let me finish, please,’ Dr Gary said. ‘If you have something you want to say, then I’d like to hear it, but you can wait until I’ve finished my sentence.’

‘Oh, so you can fucking interrupt me whenever you want, but I can’t? Is that it?’

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said. ‘My interrupting you is clearly a boundary we need to revisit. But first I’m going to finish my sentence.’

Efnisien waved a hand at him to indicate he didn’t care. ‘It’s your session, Doc.’

‘Actually, it’s yours. You’re the one paying for it, and I’m your employee – at least for this hour – and we work together on your mental health because we _both_ have the goal of wanting you to improve and continue moving away from violent fantasies and acts. Now, I was going to say that your case is complicated, because you were coerced into feeling like you needed to enjoy and frequently perform deeply harmful acts on other living beings, in order to stay safe and loved. I don’t deny that you’re a sadomasochist, and I don’t deny that you enjoyed some of those acts. But there are components of your memories where you may begin to experience the emotional totality of them, and they’ll no longer bring you the same joy or arousal as they did, or you may feel other distressing sensations alongside them.’

‘Right.’ Efnisien felt nothing.

‘I’ve talked enough, let’s discuss boundaries,’ Dr Gary said. He got the notepad and pencil off his desk and handed it to Efnisien, who took it with numb fingers.

To Efnisien’s surprise, the rest of the session passed without a hitch. Dr Gary promised to stop interrupting Efnisien, they never circled back to talking about the intrusive thought to Efnisien’s profound relief, and they discussed new methods of communicating when Dr Gary crossed a boundary, and Efnisien thought the entire time that it shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter because Efnisien had crossed about as many boundaries as he could, so why should anyone respect his? He’d seen the forums. He’d seen Reddit, he’d seen Twitter, he’d seen the places where people talked about people like him. He knew what people said about people like him. He knew.

He knew what he was. He knew what the world thought he deserved. No person on the planet would say a person who had hurt animals on purpose deserved to have their boundaries respected, except maybe Dr Gary.

*

Gwyn arrived ten minutes early on Friday and the first thing he did was hand Efnisien a book. This one on calculus, which Efnisien actually enjoyed. The cover wasn’t green, but yellow. The spine was blue. Efnisien turned it in his hands and wondered if Gwyn handed him the book so that he didn’t have to touch Efnisien or hug him hello or shake his hand or do any of the things family normally did when they said hi to each other.

He also looked good. He’d always looked good. But Augus made him care about his clothing more, and probably his hair – which was longer than it used to be, like Efnisien’s, but it wasn’t flyaway bullshit like Efnisien’s was – and he looked less jumpy about being alive.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t see you last week,’ Gwyn said.

Efnisien almost said it was fine, because it meant that he’d only have to wait three weeks to see Gwyn next instead of four. That would be fucking stupid. Gwyn already knew Efnisien counted down the days because he knew Efnisien loved him.

‘Whatever,’ Efnisien said.

Gwyn looked around the small apartment and then he frowned at the bookshelf, and Efnisien stood there for a moment and felt like yanking the new book away.

‘You have a new book?’ Gwyn said. ‘Did you get it yourself? Order it online?’

‘I went to a store,’ Efnisien said. ‘You were late, I got bored.’

Gwyn smiled at him, and Efnisien stared at that smile and god he’d loved it, he’d loved that smile when they were little and he loved it now. But he also loved Gwyn when he was hurting and when he was in pain and when he was trying not to cry and when he was being good and when he was laughing.

Efnisien forced himself to sit down at the table by his laptop. He forced himself to breathe deeply, he mentally named five things in the room.

_Gwyn, Gwyn, Gwyn, Gwyn, Gwyn._

‘How’s work been?’ Gwyn said.

‘Fine,’ Efnisien said. ‘One of the people I’m transcribing for is working on some thesis about like, slurs and how harmful they are, and it just makes me want to use them like _all the time,_ and the Doc said I should sign off the project to someone else but like, it’s an interesting project.’

‘Do you agree? That slurs are harmful?’

‘I mean why else use them, if they’re not?’ Efnisien said, winking at Gwyn.

He thought of that kid in the bookstore winking at him, and his eyes darted to the blue book, and he thought of the kid’s hand just dusting off the book because Efnisien had touched it and called him a fag.

‘You look like you’re eating,’ Efnisien said suddenly. ‘You’re eating better. I mean you have been for a while but…you can tell.’

‘I went to see someone about it a couple of years ago.’

‘And they helped?’

Gwyn nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s taken some time but the strategies were good. The way I get obsessed with food and avoiding it is, well – ironically, given your Pure O, I guess – a very mild manifestation of what they think is maybe obsessional thinking and post-trauma. Something like that. But they did a kind of um…Exposure and-’

‘Exposure and Responsive Prevention therapy?’ Efnisien said in a rush.

‘Yes,’ Gwyn said. ‘Is that what they use on you?’

‘Not really. I’m too shit for that. Well, they said because like, I acted on some of my intrusive thoughts, it’s ‘changed the landscape’ and exposure needs to work differently because I learned not to be afraid of – I mean, I was never afraid of a lot of them in the first place so it’s different and it’s probably not Pure O like at all but it like, looks enough like it that I guess, I…I dunno. But the Doc’s an ERP specialist, and sometimes you can fucking tell.’

‘Right,’ Gwyn said. ‘Speaking of eating better, you’re still not.’

‘Small meals,’ Efnisien said, gesturing to his belly. ‘So, y’know.’

Gwyn made a face like he wanted to disagree, but he didn’t. Efnisien knew that Gwyn didn’t fear him at all. Gwyn had stopped fearing him even while Efnisien was still hurting him. One day Gwyn just wasn’t afraid anymore, and he didn’t want to be hurt, and he still got upset over it, but they could also hang out, and talk, and spend time together, or even watch Youtube videos in the same room and laugh.

Efnisien bit on his bottom lip and then in spite of himself, said: ‘I’m having less intrusive thoughts. The things that like, make me what I am. They’re happening less.’

‘What’s that like?’

Efnisien was surprised that was Gwyn’s question, instead of saying something like _Congratulations you’re less of a complete fucking psycho,_ and Efnisien didn’t really have an answer.

‘I dunno. It’s better, right? It’s what you wanted?’

‘Yeah,’ Gwyn said. ‘I mean that makes you safer to be around.’

_I haven’t touched you in three fucking years._

It didn’t matter. It was a miracle that Gwyn still saw him, given everything Efnisien had done. And even as Efnisien found himself looping into wondering what it would be like to hurt Gwyn now, he felt weirder about the thoughts than he used to. They filtered through his head, sharp and strange and filled with the silvery glint of knives and Gwyn’s toes twitching and _My foot’s cramping, stop!_ And Efnisien laughing and telling him it wasn’t a cramp, it was the fucking knife, dipshit.

Efnisien forced himself to look away. Mentally, he said: _Seven._

‘That’s me,’ Efnisien said finally. ‘Getting safer to be around for three years and counting. Uh, so, what…have you been doing lately?’

Gwyn hesitated, and then did what he always did. He filled Efnisien’s empty life with stories of his full one. The only part of his life he didn’t talk about in any detail was his relationship with Augus, because Efnisien had molested him and beaten him and slapped him and threatened to cut his hair off. And Efnisien hated him. He hated him for getting to see so many sides of Gwyn he’d never get to see.

And Gwyn was only about two steps away from beating him to death over how Efnisien had hurt Augus. Gwyn had already broken his nose over it and if people hadn’t intervened, would’ve just killed him the day he found out. Efnisien had seen the look in his eyes and on the day he’d wanted it so badly. Gwyn’s violence was incandescent and animal, not even clinically detached like Lludd’s anger, but magnificent.

_We were both raised by Crielle, weren’t we?_

But Gwyn talked about how Gulvi and Kayla were engaged, and he talked about how Ash had just been promoted to store supervisor and Gwyn was looking at a regional manager job, but wasn’t sure if he was going to take it, because it was a lot of stress or something, and he wasn’t supposed to have too much of that.

He talked about missing wrestling, and he talked about what he’d been watching on TV and the internet, and he talked about his dog, Silver, and then he was standing and Efnisien knew it was over and Gwyn was going to leave.

Efnisien wished he had things he could talk about to fill the space and stretch it out and make Gwyn stay longer. But he had nothing. Safer to be around didn’t mean Gwyn actually wanted to spend any more time with him than necessary, and Efnisien knew that. He also knew Gwyn only really visited to make sure that Efnisien kept going to therapy. And Efnisien didn’t know how to tell him that he’d keep going even if Gwyn stopped coming.

Efnisien couldn’t tell him that, because then Gwyn would stop coming.

‘Thanks for the book,’ Efnisien said. Manners didn’t feel awkward, but they did sometimes make him feel like he was donning a mask that didn’t belong to him, even though he was grateful Gwyn had gotten him the book. The blue and yellow book.

‘I remembered you liking calculus.’

‘Yeah. I did.’ Efnisien liked that Gwyn remembered that fact even more.

‘You were really academic,’ Gwyn said.

‘I guess,’ Efnisien said. ‘You know Crielle.’

Gwyn looked at him oddly, and then smiled ruefully. ‘I definitely knew a part of her. Not like you did, though.’

‘Yeah.’ Efnisien’s hand dropped towards his gut, and Gwyn saw it, and Efnisien pulled away at the last minute and put his hand on the book instead.

‘How is all of that?’ Gwyn said, gesturing to Efnisien’s torso.

‘It’s fine. I’d say I dodged a bullet, but she was too good at anatomy to make me lose an organ if she didn’t want me to. She could’ve been a surgeon. Or maybe in forensics. Or a butcher.’

‘Do you miss her?’

‘I guess,’ Efnisien said. ‘You?’

‘Nope,’ Gwyn said, staring steadily at Efnisien. ‘I don’t. I have no reason to.’

_But you have to keep coming to see me, so suck it, asshole._

‘Anyway,’ Gwyn said. ‘I’ll see you next month.’

‘Whatever. Tell your boyfriend I’m thinking about him. He still got that long hair?’

Gwyn’s jaw clenched, Efnisien blew a kiss. Five seconds later, Gwyn was gone. Efnisien sat heavily in the chair and stared at the book on calculus. And then five seconds after that he heard Dr Gary’s voice in his head asking him if he chose to be hostile to protect people.

No, sometimes he just wanted to be really fucking hostile.

*

On Friday afternoon, Efnisien opened the door with its stupid chime and walked into The Cosy Book Corner and then saw a few other customers in the store and stopped dead again, because he forgot there’d be other customers in the store. There weren’t any last time.

‘Hey!’ said the same kid from before, the one behind the counter. He was older than Efnisien remembered, now that he was paying attention. He’d still get carded though. ‘It’s grumpy guts!’

‘Uh.’ Efnisien stood there and took a few steps further into the bookshop and then realised that the kid didn’t actually seem super upset that he was there. Was his name Aiden? No, Arden?

And then two customers walked up to the counter with a large book on birds and Arden was serving them with exactly the same cheer he offered Efnisien. His cheeks were a little flushed, and they balled up whenever he smiled, and he had brown eyes and brown hair. He wore a collared shirt that looked like it was a nice brand, and Efnisien suddenly missed having collared shirts like that. Efnisien walked over to a random shelf and ended up standing in front of cookbooks.

When the customers walked off, everything so cheerful and fucking _nice,_ Efnisien realised he didn’t know what to do.

‘I know,’ Arden said, leaning against the counter and tapping his fingers a few times. ‘You want some help finding a book? Did you like the last one?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You have to be nice to me today.’

‘Or what?’ Efnisien said, turning to him.

Arden just smiled. ‘Or nothing. You just have to be. Or maybe I’ll give you a self-help book on how to win friends and get rich in the process.’

Efnisien made a face, and Arden laughed at him like it was a shared joke and not a mean one – _But I called you a fag_ – but then more customers came into the store and Efnisien ducked down the bookshelves and wished the store was empty. Why were there so many people in it today? Why was he even here?

Oh god, the family had a little kid. Shit. Efnisien turned away resolutely and walked towards the fiction section even though he’d never liked fiction of any kind. For certain there wasn’t a single book out there that’d give someone like him a decent ending. He hated looking at little kids, his brain went into overdrive. He wondered sometimes if it was because he’d never hurt kids once he got older and wasn’t one himself. He only ever really hurt people his age, or a bit older. Continuing to hurt little kids felt like a goal he’d never quite achieved, especially that time Crielle had volunteered him to babysit some kids of a friend of the family and told him to go to town, basically, and then seemed disappointed when he hadn’t.

If he was a kid it was fine, but he wasn’t a kid, and he didn’t want to look at them and think about all the things he could do to hurt them and the noises they’d make and their little small hands and chubby fingers clutching for help and-

 _‘Stop,’_ he whispered harshly to himself.

He told himself that they were just thoughts. They were just thoughts. And thoughts weren’t actions. And he didn’t have control over his thoughts – not in a fucking instant, anyway – but he did have control over his actions, and his actions were that he was standing there in a bookshop looking at some fiction. That’s all. He literally wasn’t hurting anyone. And…and he didn’t even think he _wanted_ to hurt little kids, that was why he didn’t hurt them, Dr Gary said…what did Dr Gary say about it? He couldn’t remember. Maybe Efnisien _did_ want to hurt them and that was why he kept having the thoughts, but-

He blinked when he saw movement beside him, and when he looked Arden was standing next to him, and there were no customers left in the store.

_Oh fuck, some time’s gone, that’s a lot of black tally marks._

‘So,’ Arden said brightly with a smile that actually wasn’t terrible. ‘You want me to help you with that book?’


	5. Arden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entire story is 4,000 feels in a trench-coat, I don't make the rules.

Efnisien stared at Arden, then frowned. ‘Have you just decided I’m nice or something? After I called you a fag? Forgiveness comes that easily to you? Are you like…hyper-Christian?’

Arden’s smile broadened, but his eyes did that _thing_ again. Not for long, but they still did it. The sensation was a bit like walking on a path and then missing a step because the whole slab was missing.

‘My choosing to be polite and kind to you doesn’t imply forgiveness or that I think you’re a nice person, grumpy guts,’ Arden said, and Efnisien almost swallowed at the tone that was delivered in. ‘I’ve decided that you don’t seem to be a threat to the customers in my store, but I have an alarm button behind my counter, the number for the police on speed dial, and I did spend a few minutes wondering which cocktail of hard drugs you might be addicted to before I decided it didn’t matter.’

Arden turned to look at the bookshelf.

‘You don’t really seem like the fiction type, honestly.’

‘I’m not an addict,’ Efnisien said, staring at him. Arden was shorter than him, but he didn’t feel shorter. And he was still kind of baby-faced, but the vibe he gave off had Efnisien on the back foot in seconds, like last time.

‘Sure, sure,’ Arden said, like he either didn’t care, or didn’t believe him.

‘I’m _not,’_ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t do any of that shit.’

‘So you’re just a homophobe?’ Arden said, looking over at him. ‘A gay homophobe? That’s kind of passé, isn’t it? I mean I’d expect it from someone who was maybe eighty, but you? Maybe you’re hyper-Christian?’

‘Are you gonna help me find a book or what?’

‘Sure. You haven’t decided to use any hate speech yet. You’re being a nice, low level of rude.’

Efnisien glared at him, and Arden winked in that way that wasn’t quite a proper wink and spun off towards the nonfiction shelves. As Efnisien followed, he noticed more of the shop this time. The shelves were wooden, and didn’t look like they’d come from a flat pack. He saw a heavy crimson velvet curtain to what looked like a back room area, except over the curtain was a hand-painted sign that said _Uncosy Book Corner_ in white calligraphy.

‘Uncosy isn’t a word,’ Efnisien said, staring at it.

‘Mmhm,’ Arden said, as though he was unbothered. ‘Hard sciences today? You don’t want a self-help book? Most of them are shit. But I’m sure some might encourage you to have some manners.’

‘Fuck you,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘A lost cause!’ Arden crowed to the empty store, then spun to look at Efnisien with a kind of jagged, amped energy that he folded into himself, replacing it with the smooth brightness of before.

‘Hard sciences,’ Efnisien said. ‘Please.’

‘Good,’ Arden said, and for a moment, it didn’t sound like a fake customer service voice and it didn’t look like weird brittle happiness and it didn’t look like passive aggressive bullshit. It looked like Arden was smiling at him, his eyes were warm, and he meant it. Efnisien stared at him. ‘See? You’re being nicer. I like that.’

_So?_ Efnisien thought.

Efnisien thought he liked that too, and he felt uncomfortable.

‘Let’s see…’ Arden said, looking up at the ceiling. ‘Any particular colour again today?’

‘Blue,’ Efnisien said automatically. ‘Or yellow.’

‘Narrow it down my friend, that’s too many choices.’

‘How do you remember all the colours on the books anyway?’ he said, then felt unsteady. Look at him, making real conversation like he was a real person and not an actual psychopath who hurt people. And he was torn between announcing that he’d _really_ hurt animals and girls and whoever he could get his hands on and bolting out of the store.

‘I look at these books a lot, because I know my stock,’ Arden said. ‘But also I’ve got a semi-eidetic memory.’

‘Really?’ Efnisien said, interested.

‘You know what that means?’ Arden said, looking at him with what seemed like the same amount of interest.

‘Uh,’ Efnisien didn’t know if he should be offended or not. ‘I’m- Also… I’m eidetic. But not with colours and shit. Numbers. Um, words sometimes.’

‘Are you on the spectrum?’

_What fucking spectrum?_

Efnisien just stared at him, and Arden laughed and then walked away down another aisle, perusing books in a section dedicated mostly to space. He handed Efnisien two books with blue covers, one on asteroids, one on quantum space, and one book which had a blue and yellow cover and spine about the moons of Jupiter. Efnisien’s hand tightened on that one, and he handed the other two back without thinking.

Arden took them and lifted his chin at Efnisien. ‘I’m not trying to do the hard sell or anything, but are you really just reading them based on the colours of the cover? You’re not just making a rainbow display on a shelf in slow motion are you? Are you even reading them?’

‘Yeah I’m reading them based on their colours,’ Efnisien said. ‘And yeah I’m _reading_ them.’

‘You can buy more than one book at a time, if you want. I don’t know if you have a budget, but it is possible to buy more than one book at a time. I don’t know if you’ve heard.’

‘You talk to all your customers like that?’ Efnisien said abruptly, because Arden had said it in a sly, teasing, aggravating way that made Efnisien want to swear at him. That didn’t seem like the customer service he offered to other people.

‘I talk to _you_ like that,’ Arden said.

‘I’m not into you.’

‘That makes two of us,’ Arden said. ‘This isn’t flirting. I talk to you like that because you’re interesting and you’re not like my other customers. I don’t get maybe-addicts who use hate speech and then come back after announcing that they’re also a fag in a tone of voice which suggests that you’re either _really_ bad at apologising, or don’t actually know you’re gay. And I certainly don’t get them twice.’

_Because you’re interesting._

‘I’m not a good person,’ Efnisien said quickly.

‘Okay,’ Arden said, and his curious expression didn’t change.

‘I’m really fucking not though.’

‘Okay,’ Arden said.

‘No, I mean- I mean I haven’t done anything in a while, but… And I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but like, you seem to be…’

_Nice to me._

People did used to be nice to him until they knew who he was. But back in those days, he turned up the charm and wanted people to like him, at least initially. He’d turfed the charm out of the window before he even made it to Hillview. He gave up on charm the day he shoved that USB into Augus’ pocket and knew he wouldn’t be needing it anymore, because there was a grave with his name on it and Crielle was going to send him there.

And then she didn’t.

‘This is a bookstore,’ Arden said, quirking dark brown eyebrows at him, ‘not group therapy.’

‘Oh, fuck you,’ Efnisien said, turning away and walking through the store to the counter and slamming the book on it.

‘Have you killed anyone?’ Arden said, walking past him, then facing him from behind the counter. Efnisien thought of the alarm button and wondered if Arden was just waiting to press it. Arden’s hands were both on the counter though.

‘Um, no.’ _Not people anyway._

‘Raped anyone?’

Efnisien stared at him. People didn’t fucking ask that. Okay, they asked that in Hillview. He’d been asked that on the first day when he got cornered by that group, and then he cockily announced that he had – even though he kind of hadn’t – and that they’d all be next, and then, and then…

And then…

‘Not…’ Efnisien winced. _Not exactly. I mean I’ve sexually assaulted a bunch of people but I never stuck my fingers or my dick in them._

‘Wow,’ Arden said.

Efnisien stared back at him and felt like this was not a great place to be at all, because that was _not_ a normal reaction. That wasn’t fucking close to normal.

‘Have _you?_ ’ Efnisien said in horror.

‘No!’ Arden laughed. ‘God no.’

Efnisien was finding it hard to breathe. People weren’t meant to be like this. There was a way people reacted when they found things out. Maybe it was because Efnisien hadn’t confirmed it. Maybe he should do that. Maybe he didn’t say it seriously enough. He held his card to the machine until it beeped and paid for the book, tucked his card away, and then took the book before Arden could put it into a paper bag.

‘I’ve sexually assaulted people,’ Efnisien said, staring at Arden in alarm. ‘But not for three years. I’m in therapy. But I’m not a good person. I shouldn’t even be here in your store. You shouldn’t be nice to me.’

‘I get to decide whether I’m polite to you, actually. You don’t get to decide that.’

‘But you _shouldn’t.’_

Arden blinked at him slowly, like he was assessing Efnisien, or seeing something that Efnisien couldn’t see himself.

‘You’re…’ Arden said, and then tilted his head almost like Dr Gary did. ‘Hm. Okay. I’m Arden Mercury, not-quite-pleased to meet you.’

He stuck out his hand, and Efnisien stared at it in horror. ‘Have _you_ killed anyone?’

‘No,’ Arden said calmly, keeping his hand out. ‘This is when you shake my hand, and introduce yourself.’

‘Wh-’

‘Go on,’ Arden said. ‘Just shake it.’

Efnisien had a vision of putting his hand in Arden’s, and Arden pulling him across the counter and slamming his head into the corner and then his skull would crack and the skin would split open, and even as he saw that happening vividly, he carefully slid his hand into Arden’s and watched as Arden curled his fingers and shook Efnisien’s hand. Three times. And then he let go.

His hand was warm, but the ends of his fingers were cool. His palm was dry. Not sweaty. He wasn’t freaking out. How was he not freaking out?

‘Now your name,’ Arden prompted.

‘Efnisien ap Wledig.’

‘Wow, that’s a mouthful,’ Arden said, grinning. His bottom teeth were a little crooked, Crielle would have hated them. 

‘Who the fuck has the last name Mercury?’

‘Oh, I changed my name years ago,’ Arden said, shrugging. ‘So I guess I have that last name. Also Freddie.’

‘Aren’t you like _nineteen?’_

‘I’m twenty eight, actually. I know, I know. I get carded all the time!’ Arden laughed again, rolling his eyes. ‘My friend says I have one of those faces that’ll be young and then one day I’ll just wake up and it’ll be old. No aging, just…baby to old man in twenty four hours.’

‘Do you…not care that I just said that I’ve…? Did you not hear me? Or…?’

Efnisien’s whole fucking brain was breaking. Sure, some of the therapists and the patients at Hillview didn’t care. But no one else in the whole world was like Hillview. That was its own universe.

‘When you’ve finished that book,’ Arden said, nodding to the book Efnisien was holding so hard that his fingers were aching, ‘come back and I’ll help you find another one. You can get more adventurous with the colours you know. I’ve seriously got a book on jellyfish with a hot pink and royal blue cover that will blow your mind. You could pick a good violet, or something in peach. Whatever works.’

Efnisien stared at him and realised it was a dismissal, because Arden was already turning towards a stack of books. Efnisien stood there for about another thirty seconds, wanting a lot of answers, and feeling like he should be working harder to convince Arden that he really was a sociopath with no redeeming qualities and that being nice to him was stupid. And then he realised he was doing what Dr Gary said he was doing and that this suspiciously looked like trying to protect other people and that wasn’t the kind of person he was either and he suddenly got fed up with himself and turn around, and left.

*

_‘Who_ does that?’ Efnisien exploded, after telling Dr Gary about the altercation in the next session. ‘I mean what the _fuck?_ Who fucking reacts like that? No one sane, or normal, or okay, or whatever. That’s who. I mean present company excluded.’

‘Of course,’ Dr Gary murmured.

‘But who the _fuck-_ I told him I sexually assaulted people! Not a _person._ People! I should’ve fucking told him about the puppies. People can’t get past that. People can’t get past fucking puppies even when they can get past people. Or I dunno, maybe I just didn’t get it across. I should’ve, I should’ve fucking _described…_ I don’t get it.’

‘Maybe he’s had experiences that have helped him realise that people can change. You did tell him that you hadn’t done anything for three years and that you were in therapy.’

‘Nope,’ Efnisien said, staring ahead and raking his fingers through his hair. ‘No! Fucking- I know the recidivism rates. I know them too, you know. It’s only really a matter of time before I backslide into how it used to be. Just because I didn’t _decide_ to hurt him, doesn’t mean that I won’t, or that I can’t, or that I…fucking…I don’t _fucking_ know.’

‘Did you imagine hurting him?’ Dr Gary said curiously.

Efnisien felt like Dr Gary should be making a bigger deal out of this. But Dr Gary’s brand was a fairly even keel until Efnisien accidentally mentioned Crielle’s name, and then his eyes lit up like it was Christmas Day and he got an instant Christmas boner over it.

‘Nah. I imagined- Uh. Actually I imagined him hurting me. It didn’t last long. But it was y’know, vivid.’

‘I see,’ Dr Gary said. ‘May I make a note?’

‘Knock yourself out, Doc.’

Dr Gary turned and tabbed across to something and then his fingers moved across the keyboard at a speed of about ninety words per minute.

‘You type faster than your receptionist,’ Efnisien said, when Dr Gary turned back.

‘She may not be fast, but she’s thorough,’ he said.

‘It’s possible to be fast _and_ thorough.’

Dr Gary pressed his lips together like he was thinking something over, and then he just shrugged like what Efnisien said was true.

‘Was it nepotism or something?’ Efnisien said, squinting at him. ‘Like, did your wife make you hire a cousin or like…the daughter of a friend or something?’

It was the first time in a while that Dr Gary actually looked like he’d been put on the spot, like his normally engaged face just got _stuck,_ and Efnisien covered his face with his hands and burst into raucous laughter. He slid halfway down the chair and then drummed his feet into the floor. When he slowed down, a couple of minutes later, Dr Gary had his normal face back again, but that had been so fucking worth it.

‘Tch, tch, Dr Gary,’ Efnisien said, wagging a finger at him. ‘That’s naughty.’

‘She is a perfectly adequate receptionist,’ Dr Gary said, and then smiled. ‘Now, I’d like to circle back on a couple of things. First, I think it’s really excellent progress that you went back to the bookstore. Second, you said that you had some difficulty with your thoughts around the children. Can we talk about that?’

‘I mean, you know I don’t like thinking about kids,’ Efnisien said uneasily. ‘We’ve talked about it before.’

‘I do know that,’ Dr Gary said. ‘But you were around children and you didn’t hurt them. You didn’t follow them, you walked away from them, and you tried not to look at them. You were trying to disengage even though the intrusive thoughts were difficult, that’s good, Efnisien. That’s great.’

‘I don’t hurt kids,’ Efnisien said stiffly. ‘I mean, anymore. There’s nothing to talk about. And if _Arden_ fucking knew about what I was thinking, maybe- Maybe I should have told him that!’

‘The content of your intrusive thoughts?’

‘Yeah! Because then he’d know what kind of person I was!’

‘But you didn’t hurt those children, Efnisien,’ Dr Gary said, watching him closely. ‘While you have done some terrible things, you have never acted on almost the entirety of your collective intrusive thoughts. So describing that you regularly think of murdering people doesn’t mean you’re accurately representing yourself, because you’re not a murderer.’

‘I killed animals.’

‘Yes, you have. But you’ve never murdered a person,’ Dr Gary said persistently.

‘I could murder people,’ Efnisien said.

‘That may be true, in which case it’s even more impressive that you have never done so, in twenty years of being alive.’

Efnisien didn’t like this conversation at all. They had it all the fucking time, and Efnisien felt like he was eating glass every time it happened. In three years, it wasn’t getting much better. Though the first time Dr Gary had talked to him this way, Efnisien had walked out. Actually the second and third time too.

‘You are not your thoughts, Efnisien. You are your actions. The brain is not a foolproof, clever machine that never makes mistakes, it is a lump of fat and water with firing and misfiring neurons. You are not in control of your every last thought and you never will be. But you can control your actions and you have demonstrated that increasingly over time. I am not trying to tell you that you’re a good person, but nor are you a bad one. You are a person who has done harmful, destructive things and who has done regular things, and in some instances, sacrificial, compassionate things for others without ever expecting anything in return. You are _human,_ Efnisien.’

‘That’s not what the forums say,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘When did you start visiting forums again?’ Dr Gary said sharply, and Efnisien almost slouched. Fuck. He was in trouble. ‘Have you been searching for what people say about those who are cruel to animals again?’

‘I mean…’

‘Efnisien, what do you hope to gain from engaging in that behaviour?’

‘Maybe I just want to balance out all of your hippie bullshit!’ Efnisien shouted. ‘Did you ever think of that? Maybe I just need the truth alongside all of the nice shit you say! You know what people say! People like me should be castrated! We should be tortured! We should get the death penalty! We should go through all of the shit that we’ve done to others!’

‘You have been through some of the things that you’ve done to others, and – frankly – more besides,’ Dr Gary said evenly, and Efnisien froze. ‘Just because we have a tacit agreement not to talk about those things explicitly in this room until you give me permission, doesn’t mean they never happened, Efnisien.’

It would be so easy. It would be so easy to just grab that tie and then tighten it until Dr Gary’s eyes bulged and his tongue swelled up and he choked, and Efnisien could make it silent, no one would hear, and he could grab one of the pens and stick it in Dr Gary’s ear and do it slowly, slowly, and hear the crunching and hear the squelch of it. And Dr Gary would look at him and Efnisien would say _Guess it isn’t three years and counting after all, Doc,_ and Dr Gary would stare at him and look a little shocked because he probably expected it but never _enough._

‘Can you give me a number between one and ten?’ Dr Gary said a few minutes later.

‘Four,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘Well,’ Dr Gary said, smiling. ‘That’s progress. In the meantime I advise you to stop visiting those sites. We’ve talked about how to put a lock on them, but I know this one is a sticking point for you. Also, my job isn’t to be nice to you, and you don’t think I’m nice at all until _this_ comes up. It’s possible to have a nuanced perspective on this.’

‘Maybe,’ Efnisien said, glaring at him, ‘I activated my cognitive dissonance so that I think you’re a shithead _and_ I think you’re too nice to me _and_ I care about what you say _and_ I wish you’d eat shit and die.’

He saw the moment Dr Gary nearly smiled and made himself stop. He saw it and felt a tiny bloom of warmth that spread briefly and vanished. But it left an afterimage inside of him, and he liked it.

‘Well, I suppose that’s a kind of nuance,’ Dr Gary said.

‘Smooth.’

‘Two more things,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I want to talk to you about Arden. You’re sometimes going to meet people who have responses you don’t expect to the things you’ve done, and I think now’s a good time to preface the reasons why that happens, because some of those reasons will put you in unsafe situations. This is a good opportunity for you to learn how to trust your instincts.

‘The first reason a person might act that way towards you is that they are incredibly naïve, or just cannot imagine these kinds of things happening in a way that lends them gravity. These people don’t really present you with much danger until they lose that naivete or ignorance, and then they may feel like you’ve betrayed them. Naïve people can be temporarily safe to be around, but they aren’t _safe_ inherently.’

‘Sure.’

‘The second type of person who has an atypical response to your actions will be a predator, and they will recognise that you’re easy to exploit because of where you’re at in your life. If they’re a predator who feels no remorse for their actions, and you’re introducing yourself as a ‘bad person’ who doesn’t deserve friends or support, they will already know you’re vulnerable. That is an extremely unsafe situation to be in, and you have been in that situation before.’

Efnisien shifted. He did _not_ want to think about Hillview. Not today. ‘I don’t really get that vibe from him. I get like, a _vibe._ But not like…that vibe. I dunno.’

‘The third person is a tourist. They’re excited by what you’ve done and they’re kind of a cousin to the naïve reaction. They can only really associate your acts with what they’ve seen on television, and so you become a character from a fictional narrative to them, and not a real person. Those kinds of people are immediately obvious, because they’ll ask you for details about what you’ve been through, or what you’ve done, but never offer any real depth of emotional response about it. Tourists can feel like they’re offering acceptance, but what they want is entertainment. They’re not inherently unsafe to be around, but it’s not always nice to feel like a TV show or a soap opera character instead of a person.’

Efnisien nodded.

‘The fourth kind of person who can have a reaction like Arden’s, will be a person who is almost exactly like you, who is recovering like you are, and therefore empathises with the position you’re in. These people aren’t actually that bad to be around, and – like you – if they keep up with their recovery, can offer complex acceptance.’

Efnisien didn’t quite get that vibe either. Though maybe from the way Arden’s expression changed sometimes? Maybe Arden was a tourist? Except he hadn’t asked for any details, he’d just asked pointed questions and then shaken Efnisien’s hand. Like that was normal.

‘And finally, the fifth kind of person will be someone whose life has taught them that it’s possible to still care for and enjoy the company of a person that society would normally reject. These kinds of people might have other people in their lives like this, who they’ve had to do this for already. The fact is, there are a lot of rapists and child molesters and murderers and criminals in the world, you’d be surprised how many get visited by family and friends. There’s a lot of stigma around this, the people who visit can feel ashamed of it, and other people make peace with it. And you know yourself that some criminals _do_ learn how to live differently and healthily and productively. You talk about the recidivism rates, then you must know that they’re not one hundred percent. They never have been.’

‘So…should I just not see him again?’ Efnisien said.

‘Actually, I think it would be interesting to see where it goes,’ Dr Gary said. ‘It’s a public place so you can leave if you feel unsafe. You can learn how to trust your own red flags, and you can decide for yourself what kind of person he is. But don’t assume that there’s something wrong with him, just because he isn’t treating you as though you’re unworthy of respect. One could argue that I know a great deal about what you’ve done and the content of your intrusive thoughts, some of which have involved me, and I’ve never felt you to be unworthy of respect.’

Efnisien trailed his fingers on the armrest nervously. He was kind of hoping Dr Gary would tell him never to go back, because it was stupid of him to open up to someone like Arden in the first place.

‘Now, the final thing I wanted to discuss,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You’ve mentioned homosexuality a few times in the past couple of sessions. We’ve avoided talking about sexuality in the past, as that’s not my specialty and you haven’t shown much of an interest outside of sadomasochistic fantasies. While I’d like to continue seeing you on our regular schedule, I’d also like to refer you to a psychologist I trust who specialises in diverse genders and sexualities and is familiar with clients who have your kind of background. I don’t think you’d need to see him often, however I think it would be-’

_‘Him,’_ Efnisien said flatly, sitting up straight and pushing back in the chair. All at once he felt frozen and cornered at the same time, and it was harder to breathe.

Dr Gary paused where he was going through his business cards, and looked up with a grave expression on his face.

‘Given your past experiences in Hillview, I understand why you wouldn’t want to see another male psychologist outside of this therapeutic relationship. However, I trust Dr Ferguson. Not only that, but given we were just talking about red flags, Efnisien, if you _ever_ feel unsafe, you know you can always call me. Always.’

‘Even if it’s a buddy of yours?’

‘Yes, even then,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I never want to see anything like that happen to you ever again. I don’t care who the person is.’

‘I don’t want to see him.’ Efnisien said. He felt sick, and he felt like he was pressed up against a wall, or like someone was leaning over his chair, and he stood abruptly and walked to the other side of the room where the rest of the bookshelves were. ‘I’m not going to see him.’

‘You don’t have to,’ Dr Gary said. ‘If you ever want to talk about what happened with Dr Henton, we can-’

_‘No,’_ Efnisien said.

Dr Gary moved away from his business cards entirely and faced Efnisien, looking up at him. Efnisien hated the sympathy he saw there. Dr Henton had said he deserved it and he was _right_ and all the fucking forums said so they _all fucking said so._

‘Okay,’ Dr Gary said finally. ‘You don’t have to see him. And you don’t have to take his business card. You have complete agency in these sessions, Efnisien, and I don’t want to unduly hurt you. Will you sit down again?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said.

A deep breath, and Dr Gary looked around the room, and then asked Efnisien to name five things he could see. Efnisien didn’t really feel like he needed the exercise, but he went through it anyway to give himself something else to focus on, instead of that horrible cornered feeling. And by the time he was finishing up the exercises, he was already settling back into the armchair and kind of low-key mad that Dr Gary was good at his job.

‘You’re not trying to like…turf me onto someone else?’ Efnisien said suddenly.

‘No,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I’m not. It’s not unusual to see two specialists at the same time, in certain cases. But no, I am not trying to stop our sessions or stop seeing you. When that day comes, you will get a lot of notice, we will taper slowly, and we will make it work together in a way that’s appropriate and healthy for both of us.’

‘But it’s been three years so you must be like, I dunno, getting tired of seeing me like…all the time.’

‘Efnisien, this therapeutic relationship is predicated on you being willing to work with me in order to grow and heal as a person. As long as you turn up willing to grow and heal, even if you don’t feel like that’s what you’re doing in the moment, I will turn up and meet you halfway. I am not tired of you.’

‘But you must be bored or, like…hating it or…’ Efnisien listened to himself and stared blankly ahead for a moment. ‘Oh man, _fuck_ transference.’

‘Transference isn’t bad,’ Dr Gary said with a gentle smile. ‘We can talk about transference next time, if you like. And no, I am not bored, and I do not hate these sessions.’

_But you do, right?_

‘Do you like Arden?’ Dr Gary said.

‘I dunno,’ Efnisien said finally, tearing his mind away from Hillview and Dr Henton and that whole clusterfuck that he never, ever thought about if he could help it. He thought he was pretty lucky that even his intrusive thoughts knew not to fuck with Hillview. ‘Maybe. I mean, he just seems like he knows what he’s doing.’

‘At work?’

‘No, like, in general. He has this way of moving. I dunno how to explain it. He moves like he knows his body. Gwyn could do that. And he seems like he can look after himself. It reminds me of Gwyn, kind of. Like I hurt Gwyn, but he stopped being afraid of me, and then one day he was just… I dunno. It was better then.’

‘Better when he wasn’t afraid?’

Efnisien nodded, his forehead furrowing. Was that right? Crielle wanted everyone to be afraid of him. It was better that way. But why? He frowned. Dr Gary wasn’t afraid of him and Efnisien liked that too.

Within minutes the session had ended, and Efnisien didn’t need to pay the receptionist hired under dodgy premises because his card was direct debited. It was easier that way. He walked out, shoved his hands in his pockets, and started walking.

That night, he opened the book on Jupiter’s moons. It was blue and yellow, and he’d had it resting on top of Gwyn’s book on calculus on the table. They matched.

He’d hedged over starting the book, because he didn’t know how to feel about Arden, which meant he didn’t know how to feel about the book either. But now he was excited to learn about prograde and retrograde satellites, and Galilean and Amalthean moons. He imagined he’d been born on a moon like Callisto among the water and ammonia ices, and he’d be totally alone from birth until he died, and that way no one could ever tell him that he didn’t deserve to live.


	6. Crash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I put up TWO chapters today, so check to make sure you've read chapter 5!
> 
> Jumper = sweater. Also, descriptions of animal cruelty. It’s all relatively non-graphic and 100% in the past and a lot of it is 100% just Crielle being Crielle featuring lobsters, puppy and a bird, but it’s there. It's probably the clearest description of how Efnisien ended up on the path he ended up on in the first place. Self-harm. Some comfort in this chapter. FINALLY. 
> 
> I'm going on a week's break from all writing now, so this story's going on a bit of a break, but thank you for joining me so far on this wild journey!

A whole run of bad days after seeing Dr Gary. One after the other after the other. He woke up from one nightmare hearing an older man’s voice, _Pretend you’re the puppy, Efnisien, that should be easy for you, you’re a masochist too aren’t you?_ He had his teeth in his wrist as he woke, gasping and choking on his own spit. He’d drawn blood, and he was so angry at himself for having the nightmare in the first place that he punched his wrist four times and then slammed it as hard as he could against the wall before he remembered that he needed his hands for typing.

His days were filled with thinking obsessively about Ted Bundy and Ed Gein and John Wayne Gacy and _the crew,_ wishing he had his old books and going to the true crime sites and looking at all the photos and then wishing he had his old folders of autopsy photos and pics that he’d found on 4chan and the dark web which gave him the animal cruelty images that he used to obsessively collect. He put so many black tallies on the whiteboard on the fridge one day that he ripped the whole thing off the fridge and spun it like a Frisbee across the apartment until it clattered into the table and fell.

He turned his phone in his sweaty hand and scrolled up and down between Gwyn’s number and Dr Gary’s number and his stomach hurt. It _hurt._ Like he was just coming out of the hospital and going into Hillview. He thought maybe he’d fucked it up somehow. Ate something wrong. Slept weirdly. Maybe he tore something inside. He wasn’t even sure it’d hurt that much when she’d stabbed him.

In the end, transcription was the only thing he could lose himself in. He did more than his allotted hours, though never charged overtime, and listened to the Professor talk about how slurs were micro-aggressions that added up over time and he let her voice float over his mind and typed on autopilot and imagined all the letters floating in his head, coalescing together into perfect words and sentences. He typed with 100% accuracy, which was another sign of stress.

On Monday, he rearranged all forty seven books by the colour of their spines, and made a rainbow. It wasn’t really a rainbow. A lot of the books had black or grey spines. Then a bias towards green and blue spines. Efnisien wasn’t supposed to have red, because it made him think of blood, and blood made him get lost in a maze of things he’d done to others and to himself.

But pink and purples he could have. Maybe some creams or something. His brain felt unmoored, and he drifted through his apartment and belatedly he realised that he’d had so many bad days because of Dr Gary mentioning that fucking new therapist. He felt sick as soon as he realised the connection.

God fucking damn it, Dr Gary would want to know.

The whiteboard was already back on the fridge, he stared at the tallies from the day before and erased them with a bruised, wounded wrist that felt leaden.

‘Fuck my life,’ he said heavily, and dropped the whiteboard eraser to the floor just to have something to do.

He picked it up and put it on the fridge and looked at the books on the shelf. So stupid. It looked so gay and so stupid.

He went to his laptop and typed Crielle into a search bar without thinking and the pop up warning flashed up immediately. He lifted his fingers from the keyboard.

 _That’s trouble,_ he thought.

He and Dr Gary had both agreed years ago that Efnisien shouldn’t be looking for her. Efnisien had willingly put the block on his own computer, hacking a childproof safety program for his own use, and making sure any variation of her name would result in a pop up that flashed the warning:

_Are you fucking stupid?_

Dr Gary didn’t agree with the wording, but it was effective.

‘I _am_ fucking stupid,’ Efnisien muttered, then slammed the laptop shut and walked over to the desktop instead.

After a while of aimlessly clicking around Wikipedia, learning about random things, he ended up looking for local clothing sites. He opened his bank account at the same time and decided that if he also wanted a haircut, and a book, he could probably only afford two things. He went with a pair of black jeans one size smaller than what he used to be, just in case.

Jackets were harder. He didn’t want a military style jacket and he didn’t want a preppy jacket and he didn’t want fucking leather or denim because he used to wear those when he was hunting. It didn’t leave him many options. The dusters looked cool, but they were _expensive._ Finally, exhausting all his options, he clicked over to jumpers.

He’d never really worn jumpers. Collared shirts and jackets were more his style. Even as a child, Crielle dressed him like a preppy doll. She got him tiny little suits and jackets tailored for five year olds and neat little shoes and styled his hair for him and showed him what products he needed to make the curls controlled and neat and perfect.

When he was older, Efnisien had tried to show Gwyn those products, but Gwyn hadn’t cared. And then Efnisien threw a glass bottle of curl-control at his head and it had landed hard enough that it’d cut Gwyn’s forehead open. Efnisien had burst into laughter and then thrown the first aid kit at Gwyn and walked away. That night, Crielle had been extra happy with him. That night, Efnisien also realised they were out of Ibuprofen and slipped out to get some more and put it in the first aid kit while Gwyn slept, and hoped Gwyn thought it was just there all along and he’d missed it the first time.

Jumpers looked…comfortable. And _cosy._

Efnisien chewed on the inside of his lip as he narrowed his search to knitted jumpers. They all looked warm. He liked feeling warm. The cold ate at him more than it used to. It snuck up his sleeves and the hems of his pants and swirled around him, and his gut cramped when it was too cold.

He picked out a knitted grey jumper that was all the same colour, but had a pattern he liked.

After that, he rubbed aimlessly at his shirt, and then put on the all-weather jacket and decided to go get his hair cut for the first time since Hillview.

*

The clothes arrived on Wednesday morning. The jeans didn’t fit. They slid right off him, and even with a belt, the legs didn’t sit right at all. They looked baggy. He thumbed at his pelvis bones and shook his head.

‘The fuck?’ he said to himself, putting on his other jeans. He hadn’t lost that much weight, had he? Maybe the jeans were just a generous size. Either way, they were useless. He couldn’t be bothered looking at the process to return them. Not today. Maybe he could keep them for when he put weight back on again.

The jumper was also a little too big, but it was comfortable. It wasn’t exactly soft, the wool was a bit coarse, but he could feel the way it warmed him through his shirt, like he was standing next to a heater. He kind of liked how the sleeves hung to the midpoint of his hands, only revealing his fingers.

For the first time in months he looked at himself properly in the mirror in his bathroom. He looked…different. The jumper smoothed his face, somehow. It softened his cheekbones and it made his blond hair and blue eyes gentler. He touched one of the curls and then twirled it around his fingers automatically to make the shape set. He couldn’t afford to get any products for it. Not this week. Not if he wanted to keep his savings buffer. He always expected to get kicked out and he always expected to lose his bond, so he needed at least enough to get a new place quickly. Just in case.

It wasn’t shaggy anymore, but it wasn’t really short, either. It hung around his ears a bit like a cloud. It wasn’t as bad as Gwyn’s, but they’d all inherited the most spectacular bedhead from Crielle and Penny’s side of the family.

His eyes were too wide, and the circles under them were dark. As he looked at himself he chewed on the corner of his thumb and wondered how he’d ever been charming at all. He saw that shade of bright blue and thought of Crielle and his gut hurt.

He turned away from the mirror and decided to go out.

*

It took him forever to realise, but the half hour walk to The Cosy Book Corner was not a great walk for intrusive thoughts. It was opposite that green, bright park, which meant people with kids, people with dogs. God. _Stupid._

He walked with his hands in his jeans and felt strangely safe in the jumper, like he hadn’t in jackets. He didn’t know how to describe it.

A man walked by with a golden retriever puppy on a leash, and Efnisien’s first thought was that the puppy was cute.

The kind of cute he wanted to get his fingers into. _Right_ into. Just…

 _‘No,’_ he breathed, walking down a side street with no people and no green park. He stopped by a large tree and pressed his lips together, the cascade of visuals and memories all crashing into each other like a wreck.

When he was five, and Penny and Euroswydd were off caring about literally anything other than him, a family friend had brought over their puppy for Gwyn and Efnisien to meet and play with. Gwyn had loved the puppy, and the puppy had loved Gwyn, and it hadn’t wanted anything to do with Efnisien. Eventually Gwyn went off to do something, Efnisien didn’t remember what, but he remembered being happy that the puppy wanted to play with him now.

Except the puppy got tired and it wasn’t _fair_ and in a moment of childish spite he’d grabbed the puppy’s tail and _yanked._ The puppy yelped, high and agonised, Efnisien’s hand started shaking. Slowly and gently he reached out and petted the puppy’s head and to his amazement, the puppy turned around and wobbled over to him and collapsed into his lap. Efnisien kept patting its head nervously, his eyes burning and spilling over, feeling like someone was going to do something terrible to him, and then his face was leaking and the puppy felt the drops and looked up and started licking his cheeks. Efnisien didn’t stop it. He just remembered that yelp, like a blow across his own head.

And then Crielle was crouching down beside him.

‘Did you like pulling the puppy’s tail?’ she said softly.

Efnisien looked up at her with surprise, wiping at his face, and realising the family friend and Gwyn and Lludd were nowhere to be seen. He rarely looked for Penny and Euroswydd, because there wasn’t much of a point.

He loved Crielle. She was so nice to him, and the most beautiful, like a queen or a princess. She always pulled him onto her lap, and her hands were pretty, and her fingers were long, and she had eyes like his. He pretended he was hers sometimes. That he was her son, and he was really Gwyn’s brother, and they were a real family.

‘Um,’ he said.

‘Did you?’ she said. ‘Would you like to do it again?’

Efnisien looked down at the puppy that had settled in his lap and felt ill.

He couldn’t remember how he responded to the question.

And then one day, several months later, he was still only five and she’d come into his bedroom while Penny and Euroswydd were off on a cruise and Lludd was off on some overseas project and Gwyn was wherever Gwyn was – ignoring him as always – and she’d sat on his bed and smiled at him.

‘I’ve gotten you a puppy,’ she said.

‘A puppy?’ he said, a rush of excitement filling him. He imagined throwing his arms around it and his face getting licked and how they could maybe play together and he could talk to it. ‘A real puppy? I’m going to have a dog?’

‘No!’ she said, laughing in delight. ‘You’re not going to have a dog. I’ve gotten you a puppy.’

He stared at her in confusion, and she beamed at him, and eventually he made himself smile. Sometimes Crielle liked him to play strange games, and there’d been more of them lately. He wasn’t very good at them. She’d showed him how to drop living lobsters into the pot, and he asked if there was another way to do it. And then she’d showed him how to stab the knife right into their heads, so there was a _crunch,_ and said it was far more merciful than boiling them in the pot. And then she’d stood over Efnisien and explained to him that it could be fun, if he let it be fun, and it was fun _and_ merciful. That’s what she said.

He was bad at it, he didn’t like it. But he liked the way she looked at him when he had a knife in his hands, and he liked the way she praised him and kissed his forehead and then kissed him on the mouth when he did it.

 _You’re the most special,_ she would say. _You’re the only one who understands._

Efnisien didn’t just want a puppy, he also wanted a dog. And he knew Gwyn would _love_ a dog. And probably, the puppy would love Gwyn _more_ than him. Efnisien knew that, because he wasn’t very good with animals and they all just loved Gwyn. Efnisien knew that he was bad sometimes. When he was angry and lonely, he’d hit Gwyn instead of being nice. He didn’t really understand why he did it, but he got so angry, because Gwyn had Crielle and Lludd right there and he didn’t seem to like either of them.

‘Do you want to meet the puppy?’

Efnisien did, but he couldn’t stop thinking of the crunch of the lobster shells, and he felt strange.

‘Um. Okay, Mama.’

He was only allowed to call her that in private. And he did it every time he could.

The memory spun into sounds and chaos, fizzled like sparks into the day he’d realised that it was true, no one would stop him, no one was going to stop him. He could do _anything_ to _anything_ and no one was going to stop him. And he remembered laughing high and wild and Crielle clapping her hands and praising him and he remembered feeling like laughter and crying were the same, but Crielle liked one and didn’t like the other. He was wild and giddy and lost in it, the power of it was like nothing he’d ever known, and she loved him, she loved him _so much._ And she started to show him what she was doing to Gwyn, and he told himself he’d never be afraid of her because he was like her, and so she loved him.

But that meant he had to be like her.

After that, Penny and Euroswydd were away and Lludd never cared about him and Gwyn stopped playing with him, and he only had Crielle. But before that he’d only really had Crielle and Gwyn. And now he had so much more love! It might only be from one person, but there was so much more of it, and it was theirs, and it was special. It belonged only to them.

And one day, he found a bird and he went to his room and he trembled all over and ruined the animal until it was nothing but meat, and he thought of the lobsters, and he thought of that first puppy, and the second one, and he’d stared at the bird and splayed out all of its feathers in its broken wings and made it look like it was flying.

He was nine. He felt like he’d made a sacrifice on an altar, and Crielle was a goddess now, and not a queen.

His fingertips had been tacky and sticky and red, and he imagined what Gwyn would look like as meat and he wondered what he’d look like as meat and he imagined what everyone would look like as meat, and then he stared at his fingers and tried to decide if he felt good.

Instead, he imagined Crielle telling him that she loved him, and he smiled.

He felt good.

_‘Hey, man, are you all right?’_

He did _not_ feel good.

Efnisien startled with a gasp, nodding automatically. A guy was standing there, dark brown skin and wide concerned eyes and Efnisien nodded again, looking around.

‘Sorry,’ he said. Not _Fuck off,_ not _Get fucked, loser._

He spun around and walked back towards the park, feeling dizzy. Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ? Was he aroused? He was fucking _not_ aroused. He thought of Dr Gary talking about how Efnisien was going to start experiencing the emotional _totality_ of his memories, and he knuckled his fist into the place where Crielle had stabbed his liver twice and they’d had to remove twenty five percent of it.

When he reached the street, he looked back in the direction of his apartment, and then back towards where he’d been headed. After a period of time where no option really seemed great, he unlocked his body and decided to head towards the bookshop anyway, chewing the side of his thumb and trying not to think about it, even while he could feel that first puppy’s tail in his tiny hand, and could feel its forgiving tongue on his face, lapping his tears away.

‘God fucking damn it,’ he whispered. ‘God _damn_ it.’

He got his phone out and scrolled to Dr Gary’s number and nearly texted him.

_Hey, Doc, I’m not doing so great._

But Dr Gary would probably just tell him that breakthroughs didn’t always feel good. But this didn’t feel like a breakthrough. It felt like a betrayal. His brain wasn’t supposed to do this. His brain had given him ecstatic year after ecstatic year riding the high of his and Crielle’s cruelty, and now it was dropping him off a height, and he was falling through every balcony and tarp and blanket meant to catch him, like Jackie Chan failing a stunt.

*

That _fucking_ chime. He turned around and glared at it, and then stood there like he always did. Like an idiot. The store was empty, and Arden was already looking at him behind the counter, smiling, and Efnisien wondered if Arden regretted that Efnisien kept coming like this.

‘If you tell me to stop coming, I’ll never come back,’ Efnisien said. ‘I mean, if you want.’

‘Hi, Efnisien ap Wledig. Looking for a book?’

Efnisien chewed at the corner of his thumb, tasting the metallic hint of blood, and then slammed his hand into his jeans before he could see it. He did _not_ want to see his own blood right now.

‘Uh. Yep. Please.’

Arden stood and walked around the counter, and then his warm brown eyes narrowed.

‘You doing okay?’ Arden said. ‘I missed that you’re obviously having a _shit_ day, because I got a bit confused by the hair and the jumper. It’s a good look. Suits you.’

‘Whatever.’

‘Don’t tell me you can’t take a compliment,’ Arden said. ‘Or maybe you just can’t take one from a gay guy?’

‘No, like, I know I’m okay looking,’ Efnisien said. ‘Just… It doesn’t matter what I look like.’

‘Wow, you really just say whatever, don’t you? Your filter’s really broken, huh? Someone got right up in there and just broke it.’

Efnisien stared at him and felt like Arden had just come in with an axe, and swung at some tether inside of himself. _Someone got right up in there and broke it._ And Efnisien wasn’t supposed to think of Crielle, but there he was thinking of Crielle with her knife, and the way she’d come at him at the end, and he’d _known_. He’d known all along. When he was five he made a choice to be on her side. And then every day after, he’d known somewhere in his body that to turn against her would be to give up his existence.

But also sometimes her bedtime stories sounded like that. _You never betray the queen, Efnisien, my darling, can you imagine what would happen? Let’s talk about it._

‘Hey,’ Arden said. ‘Earth to Efnisien, what colour book do you want?’

‘I don’t want a book,’ Efnisien said, turning to leave. But he stopped at the door and he did kind of want a book. He’d left enough money for it in his budget. He had to see Dr Gary tomorrow.

_Fucking hell._

‘Maybe you want to look around without me for a while?’ Arden said, his voice different and softer than before. ‘Just hang out for a bit? Do you like tea?’

‘I don’t care about tea.’

‘That’s better than hating it. I’ll go make you one. Hang tight. Don’t steal anything, we have surveillance cameras.’

And then Arden opened a door behind the counter and vanished, and Efnisien turned slowly around the shop and wandered towards the art books. Eventually, he picked one up and flicked through a book on landscape paintings by Hans Heysen. He did it all one-handed so he didn’t have to look at his thumb, which was definitely bleeding. He was a fucking fall down mess and it’d be funny if it didn’t feel like just one more thing that he couldn’t handle right now.

He couldn’t afford the Hans Heysen book, not even close, but he liked the reproductions of the artwork.

When Arden came back with two coffee mugs presumably filled with tea – Crielle would hate that, teacups existed for a reason – Efnisien closed the book and then struggled to slide it back into the shelf with one hand. The books had closed in on each other.

‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ Arden said, coming over and taking the book from him. ‘Going one-handed today?’

‘I hurt my thumb,’ Efnisien said.

‘Okay,’ Arden said, sliding the book back in effortlessly. He turned. ‘Show me?’

Efnisien had his thumb out of his pocket in seconds, and then couldn’t quite understand why he’d done that. But Arden had his hands hovering around Efnisien’s thumb without touching it, and Efnisien looked away from the blood.

‘I don’t like blood,’ Efnisien said.

_Liar._

‘Then you should probably stop treating yourself like an after-lunch snack,’ Arden said, smiling up at him. ‘Let me get you a Band-Aid and then you won’t have to see it.’

‘No, you-’

‘It’s no problem. Honestly we crack them out like twice a year. Gives me an excuse to imagine I’ll one day get to the bottom of the box!’

He vanished again, and Efnisien hid his thumb behind his back, and it throbbed in the cold air, and his gut throbbed behind the jumper. Arden came back out quickly, two Band-Aids in his fingers. Efnisien held out his thumb again, and Arden pursed his full lips and then bounced on the balls of his feet.

‘I’m going to have to touch your hand for this, is that okay?’

Efnisien stared at him.

_If you knew what I’d done…_

But Arden did kind of know.

‘I’ve been cruel to animals,’ Efnisien said, point blank, and to his profound humiliation, his voice broke twice.

‘Okay. Is it okay if I touch your hand to put on the Band-Aids?’

Efnisien nodded, staring at him. Staring at his floppy, short-ish, straight brown hair. At the two dark brown marks by the left corner of his eye. His ears were small and neat. And he took Efnisien’s hand in his and Efnisien thought maybe the last time someone had touched him like this, he was at Hillview in the medical wing after that group had jumped him, or back in the hospital after Crielle had stabbed him.

Three years and counting.

‘All right,’ Arden said to himself, peeling off the strips from the Band-Aid and gently angling it so that the soft part pressed down on the part where Efnisien had gnawed his thumb open by the nail. ‘I got two, because that’s a tricky area to keep protected.’

‘Why are you nice to me?’

‘Listen, I don’t know about you, but most of the worst people in the world don’t go around just kind of blurting out what they’ve done like they expect to be killed for it. I believe that you’ve done those things. I do. I’m still thinking about how to parse them, honestly, with who you are.’

‘So you’re naïve?’ Efnisien said, thinking of the first category Dr Gary had explained to him. Arden was careful as he wrapped the Band-Aid around his thumb. And then his fingers were smoothing it down and he was getting the second and placing that on the top of his thumb. And Efnisien’s breaths were maybe shaking in his lungs, and he was mostly holding his breath so that Arden couldn’t tell, but maybe Arden could tell that he was holding his breath.

‘I mean everyone’s a little naïve about some things,’ Arden said speculatively, squeezing Efnisien’s hand gently before letting it go. Efnisien swallowed. He remembered a paramedic doing that with his hand in the ambulance. He wished it happened more than once every few years. ‘You’re naïve for expecting me to be a monster towards you. But if you mean…do I not understand what you’re telling me? Well, I don’t know the details, but sexual assault is horrendous. Animal cruelty is too.’

‘So… Then why…?’

‘Come on, the tea’s over here,’ Arden said, walking over to the counter and holding out a mug to Efnisien. ‘Are you really in therapy?’

Efnisien nodded.

‘And you said you haven’t done those things in three years. Presumably because you don’t want to anymore?’

Efnisien nodded.

‘I knew someone a bit like you once,’ Arden said, his gaze turning distant, and then deadening in the way it had before. Efnisien realised it wasn’t quite like it was dead, but like Arden went _hollow._ And then he came back, and he sipped at his tea and stared out into his shop. Surely it was his shop. Efnisien had never seen any other staff member there.

‘A bad person?’ Efnisien said.

Arden looked at him sidelong and then smiled into his cup almost wistfully. ‘I guess, maybe. Yeah. But a good person too.’

‘Oh. Well, I’m not a good-’

‘I know,’ Arden said. ‘You’ve warned me. That’s very polite of you. You know, polite for someone who called me a fag the first time we met. I imagine name-calling is downright pedestrian for you.’

Efnisien drank the tea and burned his mouth.

‘I still think about doing bad things,’ Efnisien said roughly. ‘A lot. Even today. I thought about it a lot today.’

Arden’s eyes narrowed, and Efnisien waited for the judgement to come. And then Arden’s eyes darted to Efnisien’s bandaged thumb, and his eyes narrowed even further. When he looked up, his expression was calculating. ‘Is that why you came in looking like fresh pounded shit?’

Efnisien’s eyes widened. After a while he didn’t see the point in pretending otherwise, and shrugged.

‘Well, you obviously feel _great_ about it,’ Arden said, with a half-smile that almost made Efnisien’s heart feel warm.

‘Look, this isn’t group therapy,’ Efnisien said quickly.

Arden burst into laughter then. It was bright and stupidly silly, not the cultured laugh that Crielle used to have, or the one Efnisien cultivated for himself. And it dissolved into giggles and Efnisien knew what he’d said wasn’t really that funny, but Arden laughed like he was relaxed and like he didn’t fear Efnisien at all.

‘Are you really not afraid of me?’ Efnisien said.

‘I mean as long as you’re not carrying a gun…?’ Efnisien shook his head. ‘Then no. I’m a judoka. I can handle you just fine.’

‘A what?’

‘Ooo, hey, I know.’

Arden put down the mug of tea and walked amongst the shelves, and came back with a bright orange book on judo. He put it down on the counter and then tapped it a few times.

‘I can give you a staff discount, if you want. Anyway, I was a kenkyu-sei for ages, and then hit fourth dan like six months ago and you actually have to apply to a board if you want to go higher than that and I realised I didn’t really want to teach it and anyway… I still get down to the dojo but realistically I’ve already backslid in my progress.’

‘Judo,’ Efnisien said, realising that his vision of Arden being able to pull him across a counter and slam his head into a corner wasn’t that far from reality. ‘But you’re kind of small.’

‘You’re _tall,’_ Arden said, grinning. ‘And being small is _so_ not a problem in judo. Trust me.’

‘Why judo?’

‘Why not?’ Arden said. ‘I was kind of a hyper kid, and they wanted me to calm down. This didn’t make me calm down at all! But I liked it, and the sensei used to let me run around like crazy in the dojo if I wanted, so it was great. Took a while for me to sort of settle down into the kata and stuff.’

Efnisien pushed the book towards the register, and Arden’s smile broadened once more.

‘For real? You’ll get it?’ he said.

‘I read anything except fiction,’ Efnisien said.

‘Tell me something about what you’ve read. Have you already finished _Many Moons?’_

‘Mmhm. Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system, and radiogenic heating is more important to its heat source than tidal heating. It has subsurface oceans and its own magnetosphere, and emits enough millisieverts – radiation – to kill a human in about two months.’

‘That’s…actually kind of a long time!’ Arden said. ‘That means we could literally visit, right?’

‘Umm,’ Efnisien said, his face screwing up thinking about it.

‘No?’ Arden said.

‘Kind of like, unless you _really_ like dying of hypothermia before radiation?’

‘So rug up? Get all snug as bug in a jumper?’ Arden said, eyes looking down to Efnisien’s jumper. And Efnisien liked that, because it wasn’t anything like being called fucking _unkempt._

‘I mean if you want to go to Ganymede dressed up in a jumper, be my guest,’ Efnisien said, trying not to vividly see Arden freezing to death and failing. The image played around like a movie in the back of his head, and he detached from it as much as he could to stay focused. He paid for his book, and today, Arden slipped it into a paper bag before Efnisien could take it.

‘You know what a Ganymede is, right?’ Arden said slyly.

‘A moon? A Trojan kid abducted by a god?’

‘I mean…that’s not wrong. Maybe you can look it up later.’

Efnisien squinted at him, but didn’t bother pushing it, because Arden had a mischievous look in his eyes and Efnisien felt like he was about to be the butt of a joke, and he was too tired for that today. He was too tired for all of it. He finished the rest of his tea and put the empty cup down.

‘What’s behind the curtain?’ Efnisien said abruptly, looking to the crimson velvet curtain. The _Uncosy Book Corner._

‘Fun stuff,’ Arden said. ‘But I’m not showing you today. Maybe another time.’

Efnisien just nodded, because he was too tired for mysteries and secrets. In his palm, he could feel a puppy’s tail, and he could feel Crielle crouching over him, and her slinky, silky voice crawling like a worm into his ear, and the way she smelled all through his nose and god, god, it was supposed to feel good. _Really good._

‘Hey, Ef?’ Arden said, as Efnisien walked towards the door.

Efnisien paused, as much in shock as anything else. He was used to nicknames like Effles from Gwyn’s crowd, which he hated, but no one else dared to give him any kind of nickname to his face. And Arden had said it easily, like he’d been saying it for years. And it wasn’t…a terrible nickname. Really, it was just a letter of the alphabet. And that was neutral, and okay?

‘Take care of yourself,’ Arden said. ‘I’ll see you next week, okay?’

‘I don’t have to come back,’ Efnisien said.

God, what was _wrong_ with him?

 _I never used to be like this,_ he wanted to scream. _I could cut you up in like five seconds. The things I could do with a fucking knife, you don’t even know. I don’t care if you’re a fucking sensei or judoka or whatever the fuck, I’ll stab you in your sleep you fucking-_

But it all sounded like it was coming from behind a glass wall. And weirder still, it didn’t sound like _him._

_You’re nothing. You’re nothing without her._

‘I’ll see you next week,’ Arden said, dragging the mug of tea to himself and sitting down in the chair by the register, pulling a laptop towards him and opening it. Another dismissal.

Efnisien left, and on the way home he thought of Arden freezing to death on Ganymede and tried to imagine piling him with more warm clothing but it never worked. Arden always froze to death, staring at him like he didn’t understand why he was in such a horrible situation in the first place. And Efnisien didn’t understand why he’d put him there, and even as he told himself he wasn’t in control of his thoughts, he wished – not for the first time – that his brain didn’t do this to him like it was the only thing he wanted to earn a fucking martial arts dan in.


	7. Last Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: This chapter has explicit descriptions of aunt-child incest (in flashback form).
> 
> In other news my hands are cold because we're in Perth's winter (it lasts like two weeks don't worry) and contemplating eating gelato. This chapter came for me folks, it came for me hard.

‘It’s your fault. It’s your fault my week was a piece of shit,’ Efnisien said, barging past Dr Gary’s open door and slamming down into the armchair.

‘Hello, Efnisien. We’ll get to that in a moment. I see you got a haircut? That’s the first in a while, isn’t it?’

‘Fuck you,’ Efnisien muttered.

He’d kept the Band-aids on his thumb. He’d spent the whole day between all his dumb broken thoughts and memories remembering the way Arden squeezed his hand. The way he’d asked permission twice and then squeezed his hand.

‘And some new clothing?’ Dr Gary said.

‘What, you want to fuck me? You’re so fucking queer?’ Efnisien said, glaring at him. Dr Gary looked back, implacable as always, and Efnisien slouched down in the armchair and then folded his arms and was aware that he was behaving like a child.

‘I’m noticing that you’ve made some changes for the first time in some time. That’s significant. If you don’t want me to comment on those changes, you can tell me instead of insulting me.’

‘Fuck you,’ Efnisien said under his breath. ‘Fuck you and your stupid sessions and fuck you for ruining my week.’

Dr Gary was silent for a while, and Efnisien couldn’t stand it after about three minutes, so he started talking about his fucked up week and hated that Dr Gary knew how to get him to talk. Efnisien was aware of the way he looped around the place, because he had to be careful how he talked about the nightmares and he didn’t want to talk about puppies, but he also had to find a way to bring it up.

Hillview had shown him that if he was honest, actually honest, Dr Gary really tried to help.

And that help didn’t make his life suck any less. At least, he didn’t think it did. But he wasn’t hurting people or animals and that’s what Gwyn wanted and that’s what mattered.

And it seemed to matter to Arden too, and Dr Gary. Given he’d spent most of his life with Crielle being the only person who gave a shit about him – outside of Gwyn suddenly remembering that he wasn’t only a pastiche Disney villain – having three people who cared about what he was doing was kind of okay.

It was something. He was under no delusions about the idea that anyone would ever care about _him_ , but as long as they cared about what he was doing, or not doing, that was close. It was close enough.

‘There’s a few things going on here,’ Dr Gary said. ‘But I want to apologise for leaving you in such an unsteady place when I brought up the potential for you to see another psychologist. You’re right, that part is my fault. I don’t think it was wrong of me to bring up Dr Ferguson, but I do think I should have been more sensitive to your response once I realised it reminded you of Dr-’

‘ _Don’t_ say his fucking name.’

Dr Gary fell silent, and Efnisien could practically feel the wall of Dr Gary’s thoughts hammering into him. Dr Gary wanted to talk about it. He wanted to talk about it in detail. He wanted to know everything Dr Henton did that they couldn’t see on the security cameras. He wanted to know what Dr Henton said, he wanted to know how many times and he wanted to know just how much it fucked Efnisien up.

‘You’ve been having nightmares about it,’ Dr Gary said finally. ‘That sounds hard.’

Efnisien contemplated four ‘the only thing hard is my dick’ jokes and just shrugged. 

‘At the risk of you swearing at me again,’ Dr Gary said, something amused in his expression that nearly made Efnisien feel at peace, ‘may I point out that it’s very impressive that during such a difficult week, you got your hair cut and managed to find new clothing? And you went back to visit Arden again? Efnisien, you are making great strides, and even if you’re unable to acknowledge that right now, I want to acknowledge it. You’re really starting to overcome that agoraphobia, and you’re putting yourself in situations that are difficult for you and present more intrusive thought risks to you, but for very clear benefits. You’ve had a very hard week, and I’m proud of you.’

Efnisien swallowed, uncomfortable and feeling like Dr Gary didn’t get it.

‘I nearly called you like fifty times,’ Efnisien said, to prove that he hadn’t made any progress at all.

Dr Gary straightened in his seat. ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Cuz…’ Efnisien realised he’d walked into a _trap._

‘We’ve talked about this. You have my number so that if you feel you’re in acute distress, you can call me. I’ve been very clear about what I will and won’t allow, and I don’t feel you’ve ever abused the privilege of having my number. Why didn’t you call me?’

‘I… I mean it was stupid. I didn’t need to.’

Dr Gary had the Dubious Look on his face. Efnisien thought this was a perfect opportunity to start thinking about hurting him, waited for the thoughts to start, and they didn’t. Efnisien tried to jumpstart his brain, but it felt like looking at torture slides instead of experiencing them properly.

‘I want them back,’ he said.

‘What do you want back?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Like, there’s a sweet spot with all the sadistic shit, where it’s just exciting and it turns me on and it’s _hot_ and it’s like, wild. I want it back. I don’t want this bullshit where it feels like- Where it’s- It’s so fucking cunty. I thought the whole point of like, managing the intrusive thoughts was for them not to get replaced by whatever the fuck is happening now.’

Dr Gary grimaced, and Efnisien could see that he wanted to say something, and just wasn’t saying it. Efnisien scowled at him, and Dr Gary looked back levelly.

‘I want them back!’ Efnisien shouted at him.

‘If you wanted,’ Dr Gary said finally, ‘you could walk out of this door right now and go back to the behaviours you used to engage in, and even redevelop the most intense of your sadistic fantasies and act on them. Perhaps it’s not that you want the intrusive thoughts back, perhaps you don’t want to feel like this, and don’t understand that you have other options.’

‘I hate you.’

‘I know,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You’ve had a challenging week. We might want to consider exploring your post-trauma regarding-’

‘I don’t have any post-trauma. Regarding _anything.’_

Dr Gary stared at him, and Efnisien stared back and felt trapped. It was a _trap._ Dr Gary just wanted him to talk about it. He could tell. He pushed the armchair back and then stood up and walked over to the bookshelves again. Twice in two sessions, it wasn’t a good track run. He thought he’d mostly gotten over that behaviour ages ago.

He ran his finger along the spines of the books.

‘Post-trauma is for wusses,’ Efnisien said to the books. ‘And cowards. It’s _weak._ I’m the one who traumatises people. Me!’

‘You have traumatised people,’ Dr Gary said, ‘and animals. However, your statement is flawed. It’s an absolute statement that hides the fact that you are also only human, and can be – and have been – traumatised in the past.’

‘Do you want me to have another shitty week?’ Efnisien said, whirling around. ‘Cuz I’m gonna. Go on, keep on like this, and I’ll have another shitty week, and another one, and then next time I won’t just slam my wrist into the wall, I’ll stab the pen into my fucking carotid and that’ll be that.’

Dr Gary squinted at him and then took a small breath, almost smiling.

_‘What?’_ Efnisien snarled.

‘I can’t decide if it’s a mark of progress that you’re now threatening to stab yourself instead of stabbing other people. What do you think?’

‘Fuck your idea of progress, that’s what I think.’

‘Talk to me about your latest visit with Arden? Did you get a better idea of the categories he might fit into, based on what we talked about last time?’

Efnisien let himself sink into the subject, and spent most of the session talking about Arden. It wasn’t until ten minutes towards the end that he realised he was feeling calm and far less agitated, and he was mad again because Dr Gary had done that on purpose. Dr Gary was a son of a bitch, and his receptionist was useless. Fuck them both.

Towards the end, Dr Gary pursed his lips and then crossed one leg over the other.

‘I want you to call me when things are particularly difficult,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You’re going through a time of significant change, I expect that to bring up very challenging and upsetting periods for you, I don’t expect you to suffer through them alone every time. And it _is_ suffering, Efnisien. You know as well as I do that you become particularly defensive and hostile when you’re distressed. Some distress is normal when you have the disorders that you have. But too much is overwhelming and you shouldn’t go through that alone. Until your support network broadens, you can call me. You know your emergency plan, remember? Do you still have it up in your house?’

‘I put it away,’ Efnisien said. He’d shoved that piece of paper in a drawer after a week.

‘I want you to get it out and put it somewhere you can see it in your house.’

‘But it wasn’t an emergency. I was fine,’ Efnisien said. ‘I didn’t hurt anyone.’

Dr Gary’s face twisted, like Efnisien had said something painful. ‘While that plan started as a way of making sure you had another avenue when you became certain you were going to hurt an animal or a person, it’s also there to remind you of what to do in a crisis. You don’t have to hurt anyone or even feel like you _need_ to hurt anyone to be in a crisis.’

Efnisien sat there, his brain breaking. For the first time he realised that the emergency plan made it clear – had made it clear for years – that hurting people and animals was a crisis. Not a natural foregone conclusion. Not just something he did for fun. Not his personal hobby. A crisis. Dr Gary had always treated it that way, and Efnisien hadn’t even questioned it.

He tried to think of what he used to do back at Crielle’s when he was relaxed and just…calm.

What did he used to do?

Was he just empty? The entire time? He blinked, trying to remember what his life was like between hurting things. Where did he go? He did his homework. So he wasn’t _nothing._ He read sometimes. He jacked off and fantasised over what he’d done or wanted to do in the future.

But towards the end, his heart hadn’t been in it. Dr Gary touched on that with him in the beginning, during Hillview, but it was too spiky and weird to think about. Even before slipping that USB into Augus’ pocket, sometimes he had to make himself do things, like he was fulfilling a quota for Crielle. Like his skills were rusting inside.

His hand drifted to his gut.

‘I don’t feel good,’ he said.

‘Can you give me a number?’

‘I don’t think it’s a number thing,’ Efnisien said.

‘That’s been happening a bit lately,’ Dr Gary said. ‘What if you gave me a number between one and ten, not to rate an intrusive thought, but just to rate how you were feeling?’

‘I don’t know what I’m feeling.’

‘You said you didn’t feel good, perhaps you could start there,’ Dr Gary said gently.

‘I have to go,’ Efnisien said, looking at the clock. They were five minutes away from the end of their session.

‘We don’t have to talk about it at all. But I’d like if you could give me a number,’ Dr Gary said.

_Do you think I’m a person?_ That’s what he wanted to ask. But he already knew Dr Gary’s answer. He just wanted to hear Dr Gary say yes. Yes, he was a person. Yes, he existed between the times he was just a force of nature, hurting things and being charming and hunting.

‘What if, and bear with me since this might sound a bit strange,’ Dr Gary said. ‘What if you imagined how you were feeling right now as though it were an intrusive thought, and gave me a number? Can you do that?’

‘Six,’ Efnisien said.

‘Very good, thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ Efnisien said.

There was a stillness in the room, and Efnisien realised it was because he’d said _You’re welcome,_ and those words hadn’t come out of his mouth once around Dr Gary when he didn’t mean them with profound disdain and sarcasm. He almost got up and bolted, he refused to meet Dr Gary’s eyes.

‘I’d like to see you twice next week, if that’s all right with you,’ Dr Gary said, getting his phone out of his pocket and accessing his calendar.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘I can afford it.’

Sometimes he felt like seeing Dr Gary once a week was too much, but today he was grateful for the suggestion.

‘How does Monday sound? Four pm?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘Whatever.’

His hands were cold. He pushed his elbows backwards until his hands were hidden completely by the sleeves and felt like he was a child, but still liked the feeling. He could just…hide his hands like that, and even Dr Gary didn’t care. He didn’t know why it felt good, because it felt nicer than warming his hands.

A few minutes later, Efnisien was standing at the door, ready to leave, Dr Gary behind him.

‘Efnisien,’ Dr Gary said. Efnisien turned to look at him over his shoulder. Dr Gary was as tall as he was, and after Dr Henton, he couldn’t help but feel intimidated at moments like this, because- _No, don’t._ ‘I mean it. Take out your emergency care plan and put it somewhere you can see it. I want you to try calling me the next time you think you’re in a crisis.’

‘Good luck,’ Efnisien scoffed.

Dr Gary just looked at him. Efnisien felt his cheeks warm.

‘I’ll take out the emergency sheet,’ Efnisien said.

And with that, he left without making eye contact with the receptionist. He left the session feeling strange. Like Dr Gary’s concern was crawling over him like worms and caterpillars that he couldn’t get rid of. He shoved his sleeve-covered hands into his jeans pockets and kept his head down all the way home.

*

His emergency care sheet. He actually had ten, because Dr Gary made photocopies. They were designed to be handed to other people if Efnisien went non-verbal, which rarely happened, but the fact that it had happened once was enough that Dr Gary made sure they could be understood by others.

  1. _Ask for a number between one and ten._
  2. _If Efnisien says ‘nine’ it means ‘ten.’ This is an emergency. Please call Dr Gary Konowalous on the number listed below. If Dr Gary Konowalous is unavailable, leave a message, and then call Hillview at the number below._
  3. _If Efnisien presents a physical danger to himself or others, call the police or emergency services on numbers listed below._
  4. _If the number is under eight but above five, it is not an emergency, but still significant. Ask Efnisien to list five things he can see. Prompt him if you need to. Do not ever prompt with something red. Be persistent, if he doesn’t respond at first._



Efnisien remembered being annoyed by that.

‘I don’t want them to be persistent,’ Efnisien said, back when he was preparing to leave Hillview and they were drawing up the sheet together. ‘It’s the worst.’

‘Would you rather be prompted? Or would you rather go up to a nine and risk being re-hospitalised, or worse, imprisoned?’ Dr Gary said patiently.

Efnisien scowled at him.

Even years later, Efnisien still got annoyed by it. He frowned as he read the rest of the list.

  1. _Ask him to name four things he can hear, then three things he can touch or feel. Do not engage with his olfactory senses._
  2. _When he’s responding to you, he will be capable of self-regulating. If you have any further concerns, please call Dr Gary Konowalous on the number listed below._



Efnisien _hated_ the sheet. Filled with jargon like ‘self-regulating’ which mostly meant if Efnisien was capable of talking and walking under his own steam and holding a knife about to stab someone else, then he was fine. He hated words like ‘emergency.’ The only thing that made any sense at all was the bit about Efnisien presenting a danger to himself or others, because wasn’t that true all the time?

He put one of the sheets on the table, and then on a whim he folded one up into squares and shoved it into his wallet.

After that he got himself a handful of walnuts, because he didn’t mind the crunchy cardboard taste. As a reward, he opened the book on judo and kept reading about kata, imagining Arden doing all the things shown in the black and white photographs. It sounded cool.

*

The Monday session went fine until it didn’t. And it was Efnisien’s fault that it went badly.

‘This Dr Ferguson,’ Efnisien said. ‘ _Why_ do you want me to see him?’

‘I want you to consider getting some information on diverse genders and sexualities by an expert in the field. I think you’re worth that level of expertise, and I recognise my own shortfalls in the arena.’ Dr Gary said it readily, like he had a response planned, but Dr Gary was just like that. He spoke like he was always ready to go onto a stage and talk to people from behind a podium. He probably killed all of his spoken university assignments. He’d give the best Ted Talk.

Efnisien’s skin crawled. ‘I don’t want to talk to some strange dude about sex. I don’t want to have sex. I’m not even thinking about sex! And I know I’m a fucking guy. So why do I need to do this?’

‘You don’t,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You don’t need to do this. It was a suggestion.’

‘What, so I’m gonna pay all this extra money for him to tell me that I’m a fucking faggot? So what? What, is he going to tell me I’m aunt-and-cousin-sexual? Huh? That my orientation is _incest_ dialled up to eleven?’

‘Do you think he’s going to do those things?’ Dr Gary said curiously.

‘Yes!’ Efnisien said. ‘Because it’s true, isn’t it? I don’t need some professional telling me that, thanks. I can tell it to myself.’

It didn’t matter that either of them hadn’t brought up Dr Henton. Efnisien was still thinking about him. Seeing any new male specialist of any kind, any male doctor, would remind him of Dr Henton. Efnisien was thinking about the fact that no one would have found out, because Efnisien stopped talking for a while during it all, and couldn’t have told a soul about what was happening. Because Dr Henton loved that Efnisien went nonverbal in the first place. That’s what he said.

_‘Patient is nonverbal.’_

But there were surveillance cameras everywhere in Hillview. The rumours went that none of them worked and they were there for show. And just about everyone believed it. Even Efnisien believed it. That’s what Dr Henton told him, because even Dr Henton believed it.

But they hadn’t been for show. And one day Dr Gary had called him into a session after Efnisien hadn’t seen him after that initial intake and diagnosis of Pure O, and they’d had a conversation. Except it wasn’t a conversation because _Patient is nonverbal._ Dr Gary had talked at him with an awful, concerned look on his face until Efnisien’s hands had started violently shaking and he’d walked out.

‘You don’t need to see him,’ Dr Gary said again, yanking Efnisien back into the present. ‘Not now, or ever. I’m not offended or disappointed that you’ve decided not to see him. And if you decide to see him, I will support that. I’ve been thinking that it might help if I was there during the session.’

‘While I talked about _sex?’_ Efnisien exclaimed in horror.

‘I did say ‘might.’’ Dr Gary said.

The fact was, it would probably help. Dr Ferguson couldn’t…couldn’t do what Dr Henton did while Dr Gary was there, and Efnisien didn’t believe that Dr Gary wanted to hurt him that way. He didn’t know why he believed it, he just did. And after three years, he believed it more than ever.

‘Maybe,’ Efnisien said, frowning and staring at the floor. ‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe it would help?’ Dr Gary said. ‘You’d consider that?’

‘What? _No._ I don’t fucking know. _No._ I don’t need to talk about sex. I know what I’m into. Okay? I fucking know.’

He didn’t know, but he also didn’t want to talk about it with anyone. He never really fantasised about sex with Gwyn, he just loved him and wanted to kiss him a lot, and cut him, and shove knives into him, and then shove his fingers into the wounds he’d made. There wasn’t a sexuality for that except Fucked Up. And he never really fantasised about Crielle, either. He liked the way she kissed him. Her mouth was so wet. And she kissed gently, even when her words weren’t gentle. It was like he’d found the only soft part of her. And it felt like a hidden truth that no one else got to know. Those kisses.

He licked his lips and almost thought he could taste her lipstick. Sometimes she wore glosses, and sometimes she wore matte, and sometimes it tasted a bit like foundation and sometimes it tasted a bit fruity and sometimes he could taste alcohol on her breath. And sometimes he just tasted her. But not often. She never kissed him often. He had to be particularly cruel to someone; it was only ever a reward. And after a while, he got the reward less and less. He had to work harder and harder for it. And he felt sicker and sicker because of it.

_No, it was always good._

Those kisses were amazing.

He blinked and realised Dr Gary was watching him closely and Efnisien half-expected him to ask him for a number. But he didn’t. Efnisien didn’t feel aroused like he expected to. He felt…

He felt…

He stared at the plant in the corner of the room. Its leaves were big and dark, and it was real and not plastic. Efnisien knew because he’d walked over and ripped one of them on the first day, and Dr Gary had let him.

‘I know it’s not normal,’ Efnisien said. ‘To be like this. I know it’s not.’

‘What’s not normal?’ Dr Gary said.

_Me,_ Efnisien thought.

‘I liked when she kissed me,’ he said, his throat tightening. A spasm in his gut, and his hand dropped to the vicinity of his liver. He knew where all his organs were. And he knew where all the knife wounds were. He never looked at the scars. And if his eyes glanced upon them by accident, he told himself they were stretch marks, even though they looked nothing like stretch marks.

‘You liked when who kissed you?’ Dr Gary said.

‘You know,’ Efnisien said. _Mama._ He cleared his throat. ‘Crielle.’

There was a pause. Dr Gary trying to hide his Christmas boner, and Efnisien trying to decide how much he was doing this to avoid talking about Dr Henton, and if that was just as fucked up as he thought it was, and the answer was Probably Very Fucking Yes.

He hid his hands in his sleeves again and then hid his arms against his belly. There. Better.

Had they ever talked about this in any detail? No. Was Efnisien going to talk about this in any detail? Well, he wouldn’t know until he did it.

‘How did she kiss you?’ Dr Gary said finally.

_With tongue,_ Efnisien nearly said, just for the shock value of it. But nothing shocked Dr Gary. Well. Not any of the things that Efnisien expected him to be shocked by. Dr Gary never blinked at the content of Efnisien’s intrusive thoughts, or at his graphic descriptions of what he’d done to people or animals. But he certainly paid attention when Efnisien said he was going on stupid Reddit channels to learn that he was a monster who should be tortured and put down when he already knew he was a monster who should be tortured and put down.

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said. ‘It was nice. Do I have to tell that to Dr Ferguson?’

‘Not if you don’t want to. I’m also not saying you can’t talk about it with me,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Why was it nice?’

‘Because…’

_Because it was more than how parents kissed their children. Because it meant he was special, the most special, and someone loved him. Because she messed up her pretty make up to do it and then would fix it up at the big mirror or in her hand mirror while looking at him fondly. Because he’d never seen her kiss Lludd like that. Because it was wet and it wasn’t mean. Because it meant he mattered._

He thought about the very last time she’d kissed him.

It fell upon him like a shock.

He was only standing because he was back against the kitchen wall, pouring blood, absolutely pouring blood while he held his hands to his sliced shirt thinking that his guts were going to fall out even though they never did. The pain was almost incidental except how it _really fucking wasn’t,_ and she walked over to him and cleaned the hilt of the bloodied knife on his own shirt, tugging a clean bit from the back to do it, and then placed it in his trembling hand and curled his fingers around it.

‘Because you did this to yourself, darling,’ she said, smiling down at him while horrible, high, weak animal noises were lost in the back of his throat.

He was dead. He was dead. That was it. He’d never find out if he aced that Trigonometry exam. Strangely, he was glad to be dead. He was relieved. He just wished she wouldn’t look at him like that. He wished it wasn’t because of this. He wished he hadn’t chosen Gwyn over her. Gwyn who would never kiss him. Gwyn who never wanted to spend time with him. Gwyn who already loved someone and wanted to leave them and was emancipating himself so that he didn’t have to be with the family anymore.

And Efnisien wanted this family. He wanted it. He _wanted_ it when no one else did.

Crielle slid her fingers beneath his chin, the tips of her index and middle fingers, a lover’s caress, and then lifted his head and his trembling mouth and kissed him like she hadn’t in far too long. A little too wet, her hot, slinky tongue diving into his mouth, tasting or searching. He imagined she was checking to see if he had any blood in his throat yet.

He didn’t. He swore he could taste it, but her lips came away clean, just a little wetter than before from his own spit, because his mouth had flooded with it from the pain. Her smile looked fond. The kind of tender smile she gave to Gwyn when she was poisoning him.

Efnisien’s chest heaved on a sob he didn’t have enough breath left to voice.

_Patient is nonverbal._

‘You’ve never looked so beautiful, my love, never as beautiful as you do right now.’

_Dying,_ Efnisien thought. _Because I’m dying._

She pressed her mouth close to his ear. ‘I hope you die.’

She whispered it like a secret, and then she walked over to the sink and carefully washed her hands with the ylang-ylang scented hand soap that only she was allowed to use, even as Efnisien dropped the knife and then dropped to the floor, fumbling in his pocket for his phone. No one else was going to call an ambulance. He was going to die if he didn’t call someone. He was going to die. He wanted to die, but he had to call an ambulance.

He watched her leave after towelling her hands off. He listened to the perfect clicks of her heels, her unrushed footsteps. She didn’t look at him again. Not when he made a begging sound in the back of his throat. Not when he strangled off into silence.

And then she was gone, and that was it. That was the last time she kissed him.

‘Efnisien?’ Dr Gary was saying. ‘Efnisien? Can you hear me? Can you give me a number between-’

Efnisien stood, feeling strangely calm. He smoothed his shaking hands over his jumper to check that all his organs were where they were supposed to be, and looked at Dr Gary once, if only to prove that he could still make eye contact, if only to prove he wasn’t going to go and jump off a bridge. That would have to be enough. And then he walked out and walked down the steps and heard the echo of his name on Dr Gary’s lips, calling after him in concern the way that Crielle never would again.

A shitty session.

What a shitty fucking session.


	8. Uncosy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some descriptions of serial killers and their sexualised crimes in this one. Briefly described, still disturbing. Brief description of (imagined) animal cruelty.
> 
> *
> 
> Ahhhh this story has its hooks in me, I don't even know, I'm not neglecting any of my schedule writing, but this story speaks to me all the time. Never met a character in my life who needed his story told this badly.

Efnisien wished the days would pass in a haze. He wished he didn’t have to think about the things that he’d thought about in his last session with Dr Gary. He rearranged the books in his house five times in a row until he collapsed on the couch, tired and sweaty, his hands finely trembling, and that was the only way he’d been able to stop himself from looking up photos of crime scenes, imagining he was the one behind all the bloodied, mutilated bodies.

Dr Gary didn’t call him. Dr Gary never called when Efnisien walked out. They’d discussed it before. It wasn’t helpful. Efnisien had to learn how to communicate his distress, and chances were if Dr Gary called when Efnisien was in this mood, it wouldn’t go well anyway.

Then it was Wednesday, and Efnisien realised he’d managed to do okay, actually. More black tallies than usual. More desperate book rearranging in his apartment. Rereading about the Mariana Trench and wondering if he’d ever seen the movie _Dumbo_ before, because elephants were kind of cute, weren’t they? Were they? Did that mean he wanted to hurt them? There was an octopus called the dumbo octopus, and there was a photo in the book and it was bright orange and looked kind of like a plump hacky sack with floppy ears and squishy legs.

Efnisien imagined owning one, except he couldn’t imagine it in his apartment because dumbo octopuses were deep sea creatures and couldn’t survive on the surface. So he imagined somehow he lived in a house below the water in the Mariana Trench and he had a dumbo octopus in his house and he imagined it felt slimy and weird and soft. When he got bored of the fantasy, he imagined tearing its legs off, one by one, while its floppy fins flapped in distress.

It didn’t arouse him to think about. It was at first idle, then disturbing, and he couldn’t make himself stop for long minutes. His brain just _did_ it. His brain made it happen while he nuked porridge with water in the microwave. He saw the cruelty while he ate, staring numbly ahead. He felt the stupid tentacles in his fingers while he cleaned his apartment. He saw it in his head while he stared at the surveillance cameras on his shift for the data company.

And then it petered out.

The thought reset in his mind while he counted how many tallies to add to the board and laughed under his breath at how many there were. And the dumbo octopus was just floating through his underwater house again, unharmed, and Efnisien reached out to hurt it, and then just watched it floating. Floating down in the black. He’d need infrared vision or something to see it. He couldn’t have a house down in the Mariana Trench, his organs would implode.

He named the octopus Stupidhead. Because only a stupid dumbo octopus would come back after he’d torn it apart over and over again. Even in his head.

*

When Efnisien entered The Cosy Book Corner, the shop was empty of customers.

‘Hey, grumpy guts,’ Arden said from behind the counter. He was lounging back in a chair, going through some paperwork in a folder. He wore a vivid pink tee-shirt, and over it was a patterned, black, collared, unbuttoned shirt that looked like it could be club-wear, except Arden was wearing it open over a vivid pink shirt. Efnisien looked around the store, then looked back at Arden and walked to him.

‘So,’ Efnisien said. ‘You must really like falling, huh?’

‘I am the _shit_ at falling, my friend,’ Arden said, tipping forwards in his chair and standing smoothly with the momentum. ‘Anywhere, anytime, any direction, and I can fall like a pro.’

‘Didn’t know judo had so much falling practice. Makes sense though.’

‘It does, doesn’t it?’ Arden said, eyes crinkling with happiness. The force of it was almost physical, and Efnisien had to resist taking a step back. He stared at a small revolving display of bookmarks and turned it idly, swallowing.

 _I like it here,_ he thought.

‘You really read the book,’ Arden said, sounding impressed. Like it was impressive to read a book.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said.

‘You want to know a secret?’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said.

‘I haven’t read all of it. I got through half and then I got bored.’

Efnisien looked up, startled, and Arden burst into that silly, childish laughter, slapping the counter like it was hilarious. He kept laughing, and then stopped and stared closely at Efnisien like he was examining him.

‘Do you… Do you ever laugh?’ Arden said.

‘No,’ Efnisien said soberly. ‘I was dropped on my head as a baby and I lost the part of my brain that lets me laugh.’

Arden squinted at him. ‘You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?’

A short breath of amusement out of Efnisien’s nose and he nodded, looking down at the ground. ‘Yeah. I laugh. Usually at the worst possible time.’

‘Oh, like, at funerals and stuff,’ Arden said. ‘Or during exams.’

_Or when I’m hurting people. Or when I was in the ambulance bleeding out._

‘You only reading half the book and getting bored isn’t a joke,’ Efnisien said, aware that he was being _fussy._ Crielle would have disapproved. She liked when he was charming. When he rolled easily off what other people were saying. Efnisien used to get stuck on rules and details as a young child. He remembered going to etiquette and elocution classes. Charm didn’t come to him naturally in those early days. He had to be taught.

‘Mm, you had a look on your face,’ Arden said, coming out from behind the counter and walking to the non-fiction section. ‘You had a _look_ on your face that said you’ve laughed at _way_ more inappropriate times than the ones I suggested. Hey, tell me something. Are you a pathological liar as well as an animal and person abuser?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, staring at his back. He didn’t expect Arden to bring it up like _that._ ‘I mean aside from lying about being dropped on my head as a baby, but that was a joke. Uh, you know, actually probably I’m too honest. That thing you said about me having no filter, it wasn’t far off. But like, three years ago- I dunno. I could lie sometimes. It was easier back then.’

‘I mean you had to, to get away with what you were getting away with, right?’ Arden said, absently sorting some books on the shelf that must have been messed up by customers.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘I had a whole act.’

‘An act, huh?’ Arden drawled.

‘Like, nice clothes, good hair, rich, charming.’

Arden stared at him. ‘God, look at you now. What happened?’

Efnisien smirked in spite of himself. ‘What, you want to know all the details? You a tourist, man? Want to know how I fucked shit up all my life?’

‘Ef, I’m making conversation, because this is becoming regular enough that you’re not quite a customer anymore, and I’m curious in spite of myself. If you don’t want to tell me anything, you don’t have to. But, may I present to the courtroom that you yourself brought up that you were an animal abuser, a sexual abuser and not a good person. Let the evidence rest.’

‘Maybe I just want a book?’ Efnisien said, exasperated.

‘Seriously though, you were rich? Wait, _are_ you rich?’ Arden said. ‘Could you seriously be buying way more books and helping the store out?’

‘Is it your store?’ Efnisien said.

‘I co-own it with a friend,’ Arden said, waving his hand airily. ‘I do like four days a week, and he does weekends and Fridays.’

‘Oh, so like, your faggy boyfriend?’

‘Careful,’ Arden said, smiling in a way that was dangerous. ‘You were doing so well.’

Efnisien swallowed. Arden said it like it was good-natured teasing, but there was something in his brown gaze which made him feel like he’d stepped into a different world. Like he’d _definitely_ done the wrong thing. Normally when people pointed out that he was behaving badly, he stepped it up because he was getting the reaction he wanted.

This wasn’t the reaction he wanted.

‘Sorry,’ Efnisien said.

‘No, he’s not my boyfriend,’ Arden said, his smile turning softer. ‘He’s a friend. He had the store first, asked me to come on board, and I half-ass it here on the quieter days. We get a lot of online orders, especially for some of our more niche catalogues, so I package and Kadek mails out. How’s your thumb doing? Still chewing it?’

Efnisien had only removed the Band-Aids the day before, the skin had healed over. He showed his thumb to Arden, and Arden looked at it, his hands hovering around it like he wanted to touch it again. But he didn’t, and Efnisien dropped his thumb, and thought briefly that if he chewed his finger open again, he’d have an excuse for Arden to touch him.

_What…the fuck?_

He flushed and shoved his hands into his pockets.

‘I passed some kind of litmus test, didn’t I?’ Arden said.

‘Huh?’

‘You told me all that stuff you did, I didn’t beat you into a pulp or do whatever it is that people normally do, and now you’ve imprinted on me like a duckling. Hey, what colour today?’

‘Um, fuck you?’ Efnisien said, staring at him. ‘I don’t have to come here. I could order books online. They’re _cheaper_ online.’

‘God, they are,’ Arden said, pressing his hand to his chest. ‘You wound me. Now, colour? Come on. Tell me a colour, I want to know.’

‘Give me that hot pink blue jellyfish one you mentioned last time.’

‘Got it, champ. You never told me if you were rich. Want to buy a whole shelf?’

‘I’m so not rich,’ Efnisien said, then realised that Arden was pointing to a shelf of self-help books. ‘Oh, fuck you, for real. I don’t need those.’

‘Are you sure? Sure you don’t want to go vegan or keto and start throwing away all your possessions and embrace minimalism? Which, by the way, is such middle-class bullshit. You’ll never see people in poverty doing that.’

‘You will not,’ Efnisien agreed.

‘Wait, are you _poor?’_ Arden said, and Efnisien scowled at him, unimpressed. Arden handed him the book on jellyfish, which actually did have a really cool cover. Efnisien wondered why Arden bothered to hand him the book when Efnisien was just going to put it on the counter again when Arden rang it up. ‘I’m being so mean to you today. You’re just letting me.’

‘I’m about to _not_ fucking let you,’ Efnisien said.

But the words rang flat, he felt so tired just thinking about it. He didn’t want to think about ways to hurt Arden. His brain had already managed to freeze him to death on a moon about a hundred times. His shoulders slumped and he stared at the book in his hands. Why was he even here? What was he even trying to do?

‘Hey,’ Arden said, leaning against the front of the counter, crossing one leg over the other. ‘Hey, Ef. Look, it’s my turn. I’m sorry. I think I like teasing you a little, but if you don’t like it, you can tell me.’

‘It’s fine. You think that’s teasing?’ _Should’ve seen the people in Hillview._

No. That wasn’t a conversation.

‘I don’t know if I’m poor,’ Efnisien said finally, staring at the carpet beneath his feet. ‘I don’t know how someone knows that. I can afford to eat my food, I can afford to pay my rent, I can afford my bills, but I can’t afford to buy more than a book and a jumper and jeans in a week, and Dr Gary asked me to see him twice this week and I told him I could afford it and I guess I _can,_ but I’m kind of cutting into the buffer of money I keep in case I get kicked out of my apartment. Poor people probably can’t afford a buffer, so I don’t think I’m poor, right?’

When he looked up, Arden’s expression wasn’t easy, or hollow, or gentle. He looked shocked. And Efnisien wanted to remind Arden that _he_ was the one who pointed out Efnisien had no filter in the first place. And then he tried to think what he’d said that was so shocking. He wasn’t trying to say any of it to get attention.

‘I can probably afford some hair product next week if he doesn’t see me twice next week, I guess,’ Efnisien said, thinking that might have been the problem.

_Shut. The. Fuck. Up._

He wanted to smash his hand through the glass display window just to see what would happen.

‘I don’t eat much,’ he said, listening to himself like he wasn’t in charge of his fucking mouth. ‘So I think I’m cheap to feed. But I don’t know. We used to be rich though. I mean, my family. But…’ Efnisien burst into bright, ragged laughter. ‘They’re all still super rich! My cousin’s like a millionaire. It’s hilarious.’

‘But you’re not,’ Arden said quietly.

‘Um, no. I’m not.’

‘Why?’ Arden said.

‘Look, if you’re just asking questions because you’re the kind of guy that has to fill a silence with conversation, I don’t want to fucking tell you. But if you actually want to fucking know…’ _I’m still not sure I want to fucking tell you._

‘I want to know,’ Arden said. He looked earnest enough. He had that open, stupid, baby-face that Efnisien could grab between his fists and really just ram his knee right up _into,_ except that Arden was a judoka and probably knew a way to flip Efnisien on his back in two seconds if he so much as tried.

Efnisien had read about grading systems in the judo book and remembered Arden mentioning he was a fourth dan like it was nothing, but it was not fucking nothing. Arden could throw down ten people in like twenty seconds if he so much as tried. About the only thing that might scare Arden was someone with a gun, which was probably why he’d asked that time if Efnisien had one.

‘You know it,’ Efnisien said, throwing him a proper wink, a relic of the older days. It was worth it for the way Arden’s expression shifted for a moment, like he was drawn to it. Hell yeah, people used to be drawn to that. ‘I did shitty things. And now I’m trying not to do them anymore.’

‘And because of that…you’re poor? But your family is still rich? Did you do something so bad they cut you off?’

Efnisien stared at him, then realised that was the way the stories probably normally went.

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘I did something good, and they cut me off. And then I got sent to Hillview. My parents paid a stipend into an account while I was there, and I think I’m still getting it, but uh, they won’t let me access the account. I don’t want to touch their money anyway. I mean, I guess I’m not really poor if I have a stipend and can stop living like this at any time.’

‘But they won’t let you access the account?’

‘I dunno,’ Efnisien said, because he tried not to think about it. All the details he gave the bank indicated that he had no authority over the account, which meant he had to contact his parents to get it. But he didn’t have their number. They had no local address anymore, they’d sold all their properties. He didn’t have his old phone in Hillview, and the new one he got didn’t have their numbers. He could probably contact the richest cruise companies in the world but he didn’t know if they’d answer, or if they’d even say he was their son.

‘You did something good,’ Arden said slowly, ‘and they cut you off.’

‘I don’t like this,’ Efnisien said, swallowing. ‘I want to pay for my book.’

‘Okay, sure. We can just talk about something else though.’

‘You don’t want me to go?’ Efnisien said, frowning.

‘Well, here’s the thing. Maybe I don’t judge a book by its cover. Ha. I believe you did bad things. I also believe you’re in therapy and trying not to do those things, and haven’t done them for three years. You might be rough around the edges, Ef, but you seem like a real person and not a fake one, and I get really bored when it’s quiet.’

Arden winked, and Efnisien realised he was joking about the last part.

‘You’re pretty, too,’ Arden said, smile widening. ‘Are you going to accuse me of flirting with you?’

‘Are you?’ Efnisien said. ‘Or are you just making a statement? You didn’t think I was pretty when we first met.’

‘When we first met you were fidgety, rude, kind of the worst, I wasn’t paying attention to your face. Also your hair had seen better days.’

A pause, and Efnisien found himself slowly returning Arden’s smile. His hair had been the worst. That was kind of the point. Hard to have people feel drawn to him if he looked like he didn’t give a shit about himself. Hard to hunt if people weren’t approaching him in the first place. Oh, except that time six months ago, when a guy had given him five dollars and Efnisien realised the dude had thought he was homeless.

‘My brother went to Hillview,’ Arden said, spinning the display of bookmarks. ‘A long time ago now. Before your time.’

‘Oh. Did it help him?’ Efnisien said.

Arden smiled and his eyes did that thing, and then he took the book from Efnisien’s hands and placed it on the counter, but didn’t go behind it to the cash register.

‘You want to see what’s behind the magical curtain?’ Arden said, stepping towards the crimson velvet curtain and spreading his arms theatrically. ‘Do you want to see what’s in the Uncosy Book Corner?’

‘Sure,’ Efnisien said. ‘What about customers?’

‘Oh, I’ll hear the chime.’

‘I fucking hate that chime,’ Efnisien muttered, following Arden.

‘Same! But it’s meant to be annoying, that way we always notice it, and customers realise they can’t just sneak in. Kadek, on the other hand, thinks it’s great. But he’s got like fifty wind-chimes around his giant home and I’m pretty sure his neighbours are going to sue him.’

Efnisien was stuck on the fact that Arden hated the chime too. He thought he was the only one who hated it. The sound was bright and cheerful and loud, it seemed like the kind of thing normal people would like. He stared at the back of Arden’s head, at his straight brown hair. He had little moles on the back of his neck too, like the two he had next to his eye. There were four that Efnisien could see.

He was still staring at the back of Arden’s neck as he went behind the curtain, which just looked like another section of bookstore that had a huge circular table at the back, lots of full bookshelves and no display windows to the front of the street. And then he did a double-take at one of the photography books and the picture on the front.

A naked woman, in bondage, her face cropped off. And he scanned all the shelves like he was taking photographs of all of the titles in his head. He froze, thought of all the serial killers that liked bondage and shibari and BDSM and sadism and _We know you have sadomasochistic tendencies, Efnisien, But-_

Efnisien took a step backwards, his heel jammed into another bookshelf, he lost his balance. And as Arden turned, his eyes blowing wide, Efnisien was spinning towards the exit. He couldn’t look at this. He couldn’t look at this shit. What even _was_ it? And why was it _here?_

‘Hey, wait, shit- Efnisien, _wait-’_

A hand around his forearm, and Efnisien made a choked sound thinking that Arden was a judoka and could really just do anything he fucking wanted and he thought of how BTK, good ol’ Dennis Rader, would carry rope with him and tie up his victims and how Bob Berdella put caulk in his victim’s ears and how one of his victims had a dog collar around his throat when he escaped from torture and almost-certain-death naked _._ There was a hand on Efnisien’s forearm, and Arden could do whatever he wanted.

‘Don’t!’ Efnisien shouted. _‘Don’t_ touch me! Don’t!’

Arden let go immediately, his hands up in the air, fingers splayed. Efnisien tried to get his body to move and to _leave_ but he couldn’t seem to go anywhere at all. He was half against a wall, one of his legs wasn’t holding him up properly. _Oh,_ he thought, _kind of like when she stabbed me._

His gut hurt badly.

‘Hey,’ Arden said, his tone soft. ‘Hey, Ef, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I shouldn’t have touched you without your permission. I won’t do that again, okay? Okay? You gonna run out on me now? I spooked you good, huh? I’m sorry. It’s just, honestly it’s the city’s largest collection of BDSM literature and we’re kind of famous for it. But it’s nothing bad, it’s nothing illegal, it’s fine.’

‘Serial killers do that shit,’ Efnisien mumbled, feeling like he couldn’t even see properly. Arden didn’t come any closer to him, and Efnisien pushed himself upright and wanted to bend over the pain in his gut. He felt like a muscle was cramping in his belly. Could muscles cramp there? They could. Of course they could. He knew that.

‘Oof,’ Arden said, a heavy, exhale of a noise. ‘Shit. You want to leave? Right now? It’s okay. You can leave. I’m not going to make you stay.’

Efnisien couldn’t answer, he couldn’t even look at the crimson fucking curtain.

‘Harvey Glatman was executed in 1959 for three murders but he definitely killed more women and he tied them all up in ropes and he took photos of them and then he killed them. He had hundreds of photos of women tied up in ropes. Hundreds.’

‘Okay,’ Arden said.

‘Frederick and Rosemary West killed a bunch of people and they stripped even…even their children naked and tied them to beds and told them not to make any noise at all. Ever. That’s BDSM right?’

‘No,’ Arden said.

‘It _is,’_ Efnisien said hoarsely. ‘It’s in the _name._ It’s bondage and it’s sadomasochism. It’s…it’s all this shit you have!’

‘No,’ Arden said, his voice sounding just as strained as Efnisien’s. ‘It is _not_ those things, Efnisien. Just like serial killers can take knives meant for cooking and use them to kill people. Serial killers can take tools meant for healthy relationships and use them to hurt people.’

‘John Edward Robinson convinced women to come to Kansas for like, fun times and sex. He was the first internet serial killer, did you know that? He probably wasn’t the first, but he was the first one to earn the title. In chat rooms he was known as Slavemaster, did you know that? And he killed probably around ten women. Though he was only charged for three. And he would tie them up and make them be his sex slaves.’

Efnisien had jerked off to it, twice. He remembered that case. He couldn’t even remember what he found arousing about it. He stared ahead, feeling sick. He had an iron stomach, probably because he hardly ever had anything in it, but he felt awful.

‘Do I need to call someone for you? To come get you?’ Arden said abruptly.

‘No,’ Efnisien said, sucking down a breath. ‘No. There’s no one, anyway. Shit. Shit, why’d you show me that? Why do you have _that?’_

He backed out of the room, past the curtain, all while pointing past Arden.

Arden followed him, but still kept his hands up – except to push the curtain aside – but he still stayed two metres away at all times. He looked pale.

‘I didn’t think you’d react like this,’ Arden said. ‘I wasn’t doing it to hurt you.’

‘You didn’t _hurt_ me,’ Efnisien said, rubbing his face.

‘I think I did.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘Efnisien,’ Arden said seriously. ‘Don’t argue with me on this, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said, feeling exhausted, empty, like he just wanted to go home. God. God, what kind of person was Arden? Was that why Efnisien was coming here? Was he drawn to people like Arden? What was _wrong_ with him? God. He was going to have to tell Dr Gary that Arden was a predator after all.

So why the fuck wasn’t he leaving?

‘I’m sorry I hurt you,’ Arden said earnestly. ‘I should have explained what was behind the curtain and given you the chance to enter or not. For the record, you do _not_ understand what BDSM is. If your only filter is the actions of serial killers, then…you have no idea.’

‘Whatever,’ Efnisien muttered.

_Why didn’t I attack him?_

Behind that was a loop in his brain. He kept circling back on John Edward Robinson. Efnisien had jerked off to that case twice. It _hadn’t_ felt awful at the time. He told himself he couldn’t remember why, but he _could._ Was he lying to himself? He’d loved imagining those women begging for their lives, loved imagining their stricken, pathetic faces. He’d loved imagining the power running through Robinson’s veins, the invincibility, that sheer indestructible vivid power of knowing he could do whatever he wanted to another person and get away with it. Get away with anything he fucking wanted.

There was no law sacred, there was no human that was ever more than meat, there was no rule that couldn’t be broken, there was no karma, there was no justice, there was no God, there was nothing except that absolute self, immanent in the moment, way beyond philosophy and scripture and whatever safe, happy bullshit people brainwashed themselves with to hide – like children – from the knowledge that the world was _this._

Efnisien had jerked off to that twice, gasping from the thrill of it, like lightning in his veins, a religious experience, grateful to Crielle for showing him this and lost in the muck of imagining blood and screaming and cries for help. And in those moments he knew he could do _anything_. He could kill as many people as he wanted, as horribly as he wanted. He felt no fear, no horror, no sadness, no grief, no despair, no loss, no loneliness, no emptiness; nothing except a pure, giddy joy, better than drugs, better than being drunk, better than anything.

Anything.

Better than everything.

At least for a while.

‘Efnisien?’

He heard himself gasping and wondered if it was arousal. Gasping over and over again, like he was about to come. This was like light too, but different, spinning through him like stars. The boom of fireworks, or the sparks falling down to fizzle out on the ground.

‘ _Efnisien.’_

He told himself it felt awful to jerk off to the idea of those women being killed, but it wasn’t. It was _godly_. It was…

 _‘Fuck,’_ Efnisien choked out.

‘You’re hyperventilating.’

‘No _shit…_ dickhead,’ Efnisien wheezed, aware of the books that he’d pulled down around him, his own hand at his throat, how he was sprawled on the floor, his heels digging into the carpet because of the fucking pain in his gut. Arden there crouching over him and his hands hovering like he wanted to help. But Arden wouldn’t touch because he said he wouldn’t, because he didn’t know that nothing mattered and he could do anything he wanted and Efnisien was just meat.

Efnisien’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling. He was dizzy, giddy with terror, the least aroused he’d ever been.

Nothing mattered. Nothing had ever mattered. Not his life. Not his existence. Not any of the people he’d hurt. Not any of the people he’d chosen not to hurt. Not Dr Gary. Not Gwyn. Not Arden. Everyone was meat. Everyone was meat that walked around based on misfiring neurons until they died. And then they were fertiliser.

The most useful any organism could ever be.

 _‘Breathe,’_ Arden commanded.

Efnisien sucked down a strangled breath and burst into laughter, his eyes and cheeks wet, his gut turning to stone and agony. He laughed and laughed and clawed at his collarbones because he couldn’t get a full breath. Every half-inhale resulted in more of that high, wretched, endless laughter. He was choking on it.

He couldn’t make himself stop.


	9. Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ye of little faith, have some comfort.

‘…A number? A number between nine and ten?’

_‘Nnn…’_

‘Nine? Efnisien? Was that a nine? Fucking… _fuck it._ That’s a nine. Uh. Your phone is…locked, of course it is. Hang on. Hang on. I have a phone. Of course I have a phone. God, Arden, you dummy.’

Efnisien listened to himself gasping and wondered if he was in an ambulance. No. He was in an ambulance ages ago. Years ago. That had been one time. His abdomen hurt. It hurt like he was back in the ambulance. Everything hurt.

More speaking, Efnisien let it roll over him. The person’s voice was nice. He was on his back, but not in a stretcher. He wasn’t bleeding. He didn’t feel that weird hot-cold-wet that was blood that started off as hot as his insides and quickly became as cold as the outside.

He flinched when he felt something warm and plastic-y press against his ear.

‘Shhh,’ the nice voice said. ‘It’s okay.’

‘Efnisien?’ That was Dr Gary.

Efnisien frowned. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. Why was Dr Gary here? But then the phone was moving away. That was fine, Efnisien couldn’t remember how to talk.

‘No.’ That was Arden. Arden Mercury. Dumbest fucking name but Efnisien kind of liked it. ‘He’s really not at risk of hurting me or anyone. Maybe himself. He’s mostly just lying on the ground. Should I…call emergency? …Okay. Sure. Okay.’

The phone against his ear again and Efnisien listened to his shallow, shallow breathing. Had he lost consciousness? Was he in Arden’s _store?_ He sucked down a breath, dizzy and floating and strange. This happened more often once. This used to happen enough that it was on his chart in the hospital. And then they talked about it at Hillview. Efnisien found it wild that his brain did all these things that it never seemed to do around Crielle.

‘Hi, Efnisien, it’s Dr Gary. Your friend called me, he’s activated your emergency care plan. Can you speak?’

‘Uh…’ Efnisien said. His throat was raspy. ‘Think I flipped out, Doc.’

‘I think you did too,’ Dr Gary said, his voice almost warm. ‘Do you feel like hurting anyone? Person or animal?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘Wasn’t like that.’

‘That’s good to hear. What was the intrusive thought about?’

‘Serial killers, mostly,’ Efnisien said. ‘A few of ‘em. Berdella and Robinson and shit.’

A long pause. ‘They were the ones that she introduced you to, weren’t they?’

That was downright delicate for Dr Gary. Efnisien shuddered, then nodded, then realised Dr Gary couldn’t hear him.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said.

They were the serial killers that Crielle introduced to him when he was a child, reading him the articles out loud. He couldn’t remember how old he was. He just remembered that Crielle’s bedtime stories were pretty fucking wild. She found Berdella’s torture logs, and she made him read them out loud, and then she got a dictionary and they looked up some of the words together.

_‘Wouldn’t you like to do something like that, darling? Some day?’_

He felt humiliated and disembodied and gross. He wished the carpet would just swallow him whole.

‘Can you name five things for me?’ Dr Gary said gently.

Efnisien lay there, breathing and embarrassed, and Arden was still there holding the phone against his ear. Efnisien reached up with a weak hand and pressed it to his own ear, then realised it wasn’t his own phone. Arden withdrew his hand, and Efnisien licked his dry lips. He tried to sit up, and Arden moved like he was going to help, but ultimately didn’t touch Efnisien at all.

Efnisien leaned against the bookshelf, books all around him on the floor.

‘…Five things for me?’ Dr Gary prompted.

‘Um,’ Efnisien said. He looked, his eyes roving, not quite able to properly land on anything. ‘Arden. Book on parrots. Carpet. Um, the jumper I’m wearing. Arden’s stupid pink shirt.’

Arden’s brown eyebrows lifted, and then his pale, clammy expression became a quick, ferocious grin. Efnisien stared at him. He frowned when he saw the unfolded piece of paper in Arden’s hand. The care sheet? Efnisien hadn’t given him that.

‘ _Very_ good,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Now four things you can hear?’

‘Your voice, my voice, my shitty fucked up breathing, and a car went by outside.’

‘Okay. Good. Can you give me a number?’

‘It’s not really happening now,’ Efnisien said, so exhausted he closed his eyes. The cramping in his gut wasn’t like before, but it still hurt. ‘Like a one.’

‘We can talk about it tomorrow if you want.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Efnisien said. That’s right, two sessions this week, because he was such a mess. He sighed. He just wanted his head to stop for a day. Just a day. He shivered and shoved his other hand deep into his sleeve and pulled his legs up towards himself. He wanted to fold himself away into a corner and disappear. ‘Yeah.’

‘I think next week, if you agree, we’re going to re-evaluate you formally,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I know it’s tedious to do the paperwork, but there have been some significant shifts in the landscape of your consciousness and I’d like to get an idea exactly where you’re sitting in regards to your Pure O and how it intersects with your post-trauma. We don’t _have_ to do it, but it could help streamline our approach with your recovery.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. He looked at Arden, who watched him back with concern on his face.

‘Will you be able to get yourself safely home?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Uh huh. Yeah. It’s just a walk.’

‘That’s very good. Also I just want to take this opportunity to say you did a great job, handing your emergency care sheet to Arden.’

_I didn’t._

He stared at the care sheet in Arden’s hand and felt colder than before. He definitely didn’t hand it to Arden. He didn’t deserve that warm tone in Dr Gary’s voice and he wanted to know exactly how Arden had gotten it off him. His skin crawled. Had Arden felt him up while Efnisien was just lying there? Had he slid his hand into Efnisien’s pocket, the way Efnisien had done that to other people? Was Arden a predator? But would a predator call Dr Gary in an emergency? Or would he exploit it? If it was Efnisien like five years ago, he would have exploited it.

‘It sounds like you’re self-regulating,’ Dr Gary said, his voice even and steady. He sounded like this was so normal that Efnisien, in spite of himself, began to feel settled. ‘You’re talking, your breathing has calmed somewhat, you’re not being overtly hostile. When you go home, I want you to do something that makes you feel good, or at least isn’t a deliberate act that makes you feel miserable. Can you do that?’

‘Mm,’ Efnisien said. ‘I guess.’

‘And remember, I’m seeing you tomorrow. If you need me at any point until then, I want you to call me, okay? Like we discussed.’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said.

‘Well, I can tell you’re tired. Can you put me back on the phone with Arden? I’ll wrap up with him and then I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Yeah.’ Efnisien wondered if he had any more syllables inside of him. ‘See ya, Doc.’

He handed Arden’s phone back to him, then thought about pushing up into a standing position and decided against it. While Arden spoke to Dr Gary, Efnisien began slowly picking up and stacking the books. Arden saw what he was doing and waved one hand frantically to indicate Efnisien should stop. But Efnisien wanted to know if he’d damaged any of them when he’d pulled them down.

A chunk of pages had bent in one book, Efnisien set it aside. After that, his arms felt tired and he rubbed at his forearms. Then he pressed his palm into his belly, checking it to make sure his stomach hadn’t turned hard. He always worried about peritonitis. He’d had it once, he didn’t want to get it ever again.

He vaguely remembered making a wretched sound in the hospital, and the nurse making a sound under her tongue at him, chiding him.

_‘If you hadn’t gone and opened your wounds, none of this would be happening.’_

But he couldn’t help himself, the pain was bad and they couldn’t get a handle on it. He’d felt even worse after she lectured him, he wanted to laugh but couldn’t, just lay there curled around the pain in his gut and wishing he would die. Crielle was supposed to have killed him, but she must have known he didn’t deserve it.

The nurse sighed and came over, and he tensed, waiting for something awful. In the end, she’d just petted the blankets. She didn’t even touch him, but he watched her petting the blankets and pretended she was petting his hand, and then he pretended she was Crielle, and he’d been able to fall asleep.

Arden hung up and pocketed his phone. He folded the emergency care sheet back into squares and stared at it.

‘Hey, Ef, can I keep this?’

Efnisien frowned at it. He didn’t want to have this conversation while on the floor, but he knew it was going to take a lot of effort to stand.

‘How come you have that?’ Efnisien said. ‘Did you…? Did you put your hand in my pocket?’

Arden’s eyes widened. ‘I- I thought you were having an asthma attack or something. I’ve seen panic attacks, but that was intense, and I just wanted to be sure you didn’t have like, medical alert information on you. I’m sorry. Normally I would have asked, but you weren’t responding to anything at all. You wouldn’t respond to your name or anything.’

Efnisien felt sick. He didn’t want to ask the next question, but he had to. He had to ask. He felt crowded even though Arden wasn’t crowding him. He felt like he was back at Hillview and Dr Henton was there and his hands, his fucking hands…

‘Did you _touch_ me?’ Efnisien said, hoping Arden understood what he meant. ‘Like did you um, feel me up, or…? You didn’t- I mean, I just have to know, I just- I know it’s stupid, but did you-’

_‘No,’_ Arden said. And then, to Efnisien’s amazement, his brown eyes filled with tears. The horror on his face was plain. He even raised his hands palm forward as though making it clear he wasn’t a threat. ‘Efnisien, I would _never_ do something like that. Ever. I’m the _last…’_

His voice choked off and his hands dropped.

‘No, I know,’ Efnisien said. ‘I know. I just had to, for like- Because my mind does stupid things. That’s all.’

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Arden said. He took a huge breath and shuddered it out. Then he wrapped an arm around himself and looked the smallest Efnisien had ever seen him. ‘I really wouldn’t do that. It seemed like an emergency. I didn’t know what to do. I really just checked your pockets, I was looking for an _inhaler._ Next time, what should I do? Do I wait it out? Maybe if you give me Dr Konowalous’ number, I can-’

‘Just call him Dr Gary,’ Efnisien said, pushing up until he was on his knees. There, that was one step closer to standing. He looked more closely at Arden. God, the kid was really upset. ‘Um. I’m sorry for having a breakdown in your store. Are you…?’

This was not a question Efnisien asked people. For a moment he had to taste the words in his mouth to make sure he had the order of them right.

‘Are you okay?’ Efnisien said.

Arden smiled at him, though his face was still twisted up like he wasn’t okay at all. ‘I should never have introduced you to the Uncosy Book Corner like that. I thought maybe you even knew about it and were just pretending you didn’t. Most people know about it. And even if you didn’t know…’ Arden’s gaze went distant, then snapped back into focus all at once, and the next time he looked at Efnisien, that presence that Arden always carried with him was back. ‘Ah, but listen to me, having my own freak out when you’re the star of the show. Can you stand?’

‘Yeah, I think,’ Efnisien said. ‘Also I damaged this book. I can pay for it like, um, next time. Next week.’

‘You’re going to come back?’ Arden said, sounding a little amused, a little worried.

Efnisien pushed up and braced himself on the bookshelf, then rolled his neck back and forth. It cracked twice. Better. He didn’t look at the crimson curtain, but he also couldn’t feel all those serial killers clamouring up inside him like they did before.

‘Don’t worry about the books,’ Arden said.

‘I damaged one. It’s about, uh, something about engineering. I can buy it next time. I’ll read it.’

‘How conscientious of you. But seriously, some bent pages isn’t the end of the world. I can discount it. Talk to me when you’ve got jam all over your hands and then decide to literally touch every single book on a shelf.’

Efnisien looked at him, and Arden smiled gently. ‘Kids.’

‘The little shits,’ he said.

‘I know, right? Okay, you lean against the bookshelf for a second, I’m going to close the store for five minutes so you can get some breathing space. This whole time I was low-key panicking that a family would come in.’

‘But-’

‘It’s just five minutes, I have to do it every time I want to take a piss. Hang on.’

Arden spun and walked to the door and turned the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed.’ He locked the door, then picked up another small sign that was resting against a plant in a pot, and added that onto the door. The light from outside hit it, and Efnisien could tell it was a ‘back in five!’ sign.

‘Okay, great. Come into the breakroom,’ Arden said. ‘No BDSM books, I promise.’

‘Uh. You don’t want me to just leave?’

‘After you scared the living daylights out of me?’ Arden said, already walking behind the front counter towards the door he’d disappeared behind to get the Band-Aids. He gestured for Efnisien to follow him. Efnisien looked at the stack of books down on the floor, then followed. As he walked past the counter, he saw the blue and pink jellyfish book there. Asking for it felt like it had happened a week ago, not twenty minutes ago. 

The breakroom was small. There was a tiny four seater table with only three chairs, and a finished cup of coffee that hadn’t been put in the small, poky sink. Arden walked straight over to the cabinet on the wall and drew out of a glass, then ran water into it from the tap. After that he opened another cabinet and rummaged around inside of it.

Efnisien sat, looking around curiously. He could see some policies and rules affixed to the walls. There was a photo of about eight people sitting at that large table in the Uncosy room, all playing some kind of game with lots of dice and maps. There was a photo of Arden holding an ‘Employee of the Month’ sign, grinning for all he was worth, but he pointed to a pot plant in the photo, so it was clearly meant for the plant.

_That’s cute,_ Efnisien thought. _That’s cute and stupid._

His shoulders relaxed, then he startled when food and a glass of water appeared in front of him.

‘There’s a cookie, it’s choc chip and I made it myself. There’s an apple. And I found some crackers. Take your pick.’

‘I don’t need-’

‘When you have a crash like that, it’s good to get some water and food into you. It’ll stabilise your blood sugar and make you feel a bit more human,’ Arden said firmly. ‘If you can’t eat anything at all because you think you’ll be sick, have some of the water and then wait a few minutes and try a cracker, okay?’

‘You’re bossy as fuck,’ Efnisien muttered, reaching for the glass.

Arden sat down heavily beside him, watching everything Efnisien did with a kind of intensity that was unnerving.

‘You apologised for the breakdown before,’ Arden said eventually, once Efnisien had drunk half of the water. ‘I appreciate that you’re being polite around me, but things like that are exempt. You don’t need to apologise for that.’

‘Stupid as fuck, though. God.’

‘I kind of get the sense that while you’ve done some pretty terrible things, you’ve had some pretty terrible things happen to you.’

Efnisien broke a cracker in half and stared at it. He could probably eat a cracker. The cookie looked good though. The chocolate chips were large and there were a lot of them, and Efnisien didn’t buy things like that for himself.

Arden nudged the plate with the cookie on it towards him.

‘Go on,’ Arden said. ‘They’re really good. I mean not to big-note my cooking skills or anything, but they’re legit. You don’t have to have much. Just a little.’

Arden took the cookie in his hands and broke it into several pieces. He picked up a small piece with a large chocolate chip and held it out to Efnisien. After a few seconds, Efnisien took it after putting the pieces of cracker down. He didn’t think a chocolate chip cookie would have too much fat in it. That meant he could digest it, right?

Truthfully he didn’t actually know what his gut could and couldn’t handle. Sometimes he ate well and his gut still revolted on him. Warily, he ate the piece of cookie. It was soft and buttery and rich, and his mouth flooded with saliva. But in a good way, not in a ‘Crielle’s just stabbed me five times’ way.

He reached for another piece of cookie. Arden smiled at him.

‘Dr Gary sounds good,’ Arden said. ‘Is that the therapist you’re seeing?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, after swallowing. He reached up and neatly removed the crumbs off his lips, then licked them off his finger. It’d been a while since he’d bothered to have food that tasted good. He sort of forgot how nice it could be. He was eating the best chocolate chip cookie on the planet. Arden was right, they were _legit._ He reached for another piece. ‘I’ve been seeing him since Hillview. I’m not like, fully discharged yet in some ways. I’m an outpatient. I’ve been an outpatient for two years.’

He tried not to think about serial killers, but the fact that he had to try not to, meant the thoughts were coming back. He winced and wished they’d just stay the fuck away. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t even _like_ it.

Dr Gary would want to know that.

Maybe Dr Gary was right. Maybe it was time to do a re-evaluation.

‘All those books you have…’ Efnisien said, thinking about that book cover, the headless woman with the rope around her.

‘We don’t have to talk about that. You don’t have to see them ever again.’

‘Is that, um, Kadek’s hobby? Or yours?’

That was the thing that was playing on Efnisien’s mind. Those books didn’t just appear, and this store was owned by two people.

‘Do you really want to talk about this?’ Arden said.

‘I probably won’t have another like…meltdown,’ Efnisien admitted. ‘My brain doesn’t tend to do a bunch in a row. It spaces them out.’

‘Oh, so it’s considerate like that,’ Arden said brightly.

‘Downright mannerly.’

Arden snickered and pinched up a piece of cookie for himself, winking at Efnisien as he ate it. Then he picked up half the cracker and ate that too.

‘We’re both active in the BDSM community,’ Arden said finally. ‘The books we have, that started out as a hobby of mine, actually. I’m a rope master, which sounds pretentious as fuck, so let’s just say that I teach some classes and mentor a few people into kinbaku and shibari and leave it at that. I used to collect photography books, or encouraged friends to make their own art books. Always with people who consented. Always. One hundred percent of the time.’

Efnisien didn’t know what to say. Arden made it sound normal. None of it seemed normal.

‘I’m kind of worried you won’t ever come back,’ Arden said. ‘That is completely your call, too, by the way.’

‘You’re…worried,’ Efnisien said. ‘That I won’t come back? Dude, you don’t want me here.’

‘Don’t do that,’ Arden said sternly. ‘Don’t tell me what I want and don’t want. You can tell me that’s what you think, but it’s not a fact. I think you’re interesting. I wasn’t lying before. I still think you’re interesting. I mean I think you’re also kind of a disaster, but hey, sometimes people are.’

Efnisien’s lips twitched. He couldn’t tell if he wanted to smile or frown. His abdomen was beginning to feel more like his abdomen again. He sipped more of the water, wishing that he could just curl up back here and fall asleep on the floor even, while Arden worked in the store. But there was no room and that was a weird thing to want. He was pretty sure he shouldn’t ever come back to the store. That would be the smart thing to do, wouldn’t it?

‘Hey, Ef,’ Arden said. ‘You said before that you did a good thing, and that your family cut you off because of it. Can I ask just like, one question? You don’t have to answer it.’

‘Whatever,’ Efnisien said, waving a hand and eating some more of the cookie. Those chocolate chips were the best. They were like gourmet, or something.

‘Your family,’ Arden said slowly, like he was feeling his way in the dark. ‘Are they bad people?’

‘Hm? Oh, like, aside from my cousin, they’re fucking horrendous.’

_Except for Crielle._

No, Efnisien couldn’t even say that. He couldn’t. He wanted to, because he loved her. But he also loved Gwyn. He’d made his choice. Wrong fucking choice, but he still made it.

‘It’s cool,’ Efnisien said. ‘They all fled the country, basically. I think my parents are probably doing the whole cruise ship thing, like they’ve always done. Penny and Euroswydd’s longest goddamn honeymoon. Crielle has _definitely_ gone to some non-extradition country just in case. Fuck knows what Lludd is doing. Probably just staring grimly at stuff and daydreaming of beating his son into a pulp. So it’s just like, me and my millionaire cousin now. My cousin sees me once a month. Which is nice of him, because I used to treat him like shit. I was in with the horrendous stuff, you know – that’s why I keep saying you shouldn’t like, be nice to me – but my cousin was always like, he was a good person from the beginning.’

‘I see.’

Efnisien rolled his eyes. He felt much colder than he had before, even wearing the jumper. He didn’t like to turn the heating on in his apartment, but maybe he’d have a hot shower when he got home and then put the jumper straight on so that he could keep all that heat with him for a little while.

‘So… No, okay, I’m not going to ask more questions. I’m just being rude now,’ Arden said, smiling to himself. ‘I think there’s a part of me that wants to make sure I won’t trigger you again. But the world doesn’t work like that anyway. I’m working against my own sense of powerlessness, which isn’t actually helpful for you.’

‘Huh?’ Efnisien said, staring at him. That sounded like psychological shit.

‘I’m just saying…I think I’m trying to make myself feel better, instead of trying to make you feel better.’

‘You got me a cookie and an apple and everything,’ Efnisien said. ‘You didn’t kick me out of your store. That wasn’t you trying to make me feel better?’

‘If you’re going to put it like _that,’_ Arden said, grinning. ‘But actually that was to make me feel better too. I’m used to looking after people who are vulnerable. Rope master, remember? I wouldn’t do…some of the things I do, if I didn’t like to take care of people. I’d say it comes with the territory, but you don’t even know that, do you? Like, my god, I have been compared to some unsavoury things in my lifetime but never a serial killer.’

‘I didn’t mean you.’

‘No,’ Arden said, teasing him. ‘You just meant all the _other_ people who are into BDSM.’

‘Okay, yeah, I’m maybe wondering if you’re a serial killer. Like a stupid fucking baby-faced faggy cheerful _annoying_ serial killer.’

Arden burst into laughter, even as Efnisien mumbled that he was sorry for calling him faggy. But as Arden’s laughter faded, he studied Efnisien in turn.

‘You really are kind of worried about it, aren’t you?’ Arden said. ‘Look, I’m not, for what it’s worth. You asked me early on actually, if I’d ever raped or killed anyone. I haven’t.’

‘It’s not even about that. It’s just something my brain is going to do,’ Efnisien said, shrugging. ‘My brain does that. I have um, like, obsessive compulsive disorder. But it’s a type called Pure O. I don’t really have compulsions, I just get the obsessional thinking. So- Yeah. When I said I can’t read true crime, it’s kind of because I fixate.’

‘The same with the colour red?’ Arden said. Efnisien looked up, surprised. ‘You also said you didn’t like to look at blood, either.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. He was kind of impressed that Arden had remembered all of that.

‘I had PTSD for a while. You know, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,’ Arden said. ‘Honestly there’s _still_ certain things I can’t do or talk about. Or things I have to avoid. I’m mostly fine? So they’ve downgraded it because it’s not affecting my quality of life anymore. It hasn’t for ages. I guess I’m just saying that I get how brains can do things you didn’t ask them to do, and how it’s usually happening at the least convenient times. Brains are rude, is what I’m saying, and having to live with them is a pain in the ass.’

Efnisien wanted so badly to ask what had caused the PTSD, but he was afraid to. Afraid because he was sure he’d given that to other people. Because he didn’t want Arden to know what it was like, because he’d cackled when he heard that he’d inflicted it on others in the past. What Dr Gary called cognitive dissonance, at times like this, was just painful.

‘You know what?’ Arden said. ‘I think you handled all of that really well. It was clearly an emergency, and you were like catatonic for a few minutes there, or something close to it. And here you are talking and eating and making conversation. That’s pretty amazing, Ef. Not a lot of people would be able to do that.’

‘Shut up,’ Efnisien muttered.

God, he needed those words. All of them. And in Arden’s voice? The way Arden could make his voice soft and warm, and sounded like he really knew what he was talking about.

‘I’m going to come back,’ Efnisien said, sipping the water and realising he couldn’t eat any more. He felt awkward now, sitting there, when the store was meant to be open and Efnisien was meant to be walking home with a book. There was a routine. ‘Just, in case you worry about it. Dr Gary reckons this is like, not a bad place for me to come to, once a week.’

‘You told him about me, didn’t you?’ Arden said, smiling at him.

‘Look, I can also _not_ come back and you can go fuck yourself,’ Efnisien said.

Arden laughed, the sound turning into genuine giggles that were kind of endearing. Arden laughed like he didn’t know people would want to punch him in the face for that sound. It was the kind of sound Efnisien expected from kids with bottle-thick glasses and buck teeth. Arden made it sound nice.

‘Can I have your number?’ Arden said.

Efnisien stared at him.

‘We’re friends, right?’ Arden said. ‘You can still decide you hate me, you can decide not to come back, you can block my number, but this, right now, is pretty friendly. If you ask me. Maybe you can text me sometimes.’

‘I don’t text people.’

‘Sure,’ Arden said, easily. ‘Here, put your number in my phone. If you want.’

Efnisien kind of _did_ want that. He wanted to get texts from Arden. He didn’t even know what that would look like. The only person he’d ever texted for fun was Gwyn. And Gwyn was kind of useless at texting for fun, and Efnisien didn’t bug him at all these days. He hadn’t since before Hillview.

He stared in confusion at Arden’s phone, which was a different layout to his. Arden walked him through it easily, with clear instructions, and Efnisien found himself putting his number into Arden’s phone under the name ‘Ef.’

After that, he handed Arden his own phone after unlocking it. He opened his mouth to explain how to use it to Arden, but Arden was already in his address book. And then he was scrolling through Efnisien’s paltry list of numbers, and Efnisien winced and looked away.

‘Well,’ Arden said to himself. ‘At least now you’ll have another number in your phone.’

‘God, I can’t believe this is happening. I literally _fell down_ in your store.’

‘I’ve seen worse,’ Arden said, shrugging and handing Efnisien’s phone back to him. He’d put his number under ‘Arden Mercury.’ It was a ridiculous name, but Efnisien kind of liked it. He bet no one else in the world had that name. ‘Also like, I’d rather deal with you, than the toddler who came in and _licked_ as many books as she could while her parents literally just stood there and _filmed_ it. Efnisien, she licked so many books. So many.’

‘Did she give you PTSD?’ Efnisien said, smirking in spite of himself. Maybe it was wrong to tease Arden about it, but from the knowing, amused look in Arden’s eyes, he wasn’t doing badly. Why was he enjoying himself? He wasn’t supposed to be having a good time!

‘It _did,’_ Arden gasped. ‘How did you guess? I mean toddlers are toddlers, they do stupid shit, that’s what they _do._ But the parents filmed it, Efnisien! They filmed it, and not even for TikTok, but for Instagram! Their kid was a biohazard in my store. _My store._ Yuck.’

Efnisien smiled, couldn’t quite bring himself to laugh. He felt a bit dislocated from the day, from himself, but he thought he’d be able to walk home. He wanted to stay, but he needed to think.

‘Um,’ Efnisien said. ‘I should… I should get the book and let you get back to work.’

‘Roger that,’ Arden said with a mock salute.

They both stood at the same time. Efnisien picked up the plate to take it to the sink, and Arden carefully took it from his hand without touching his fingers, and placed it back on the table.

‘You are so not on dish duty today, Ef,’ Arden said, pointing Efnisien towards the door back to the main part of the store.

Efnisien walked out, and Arden took the jellyfish book off the counter and held it up as though asking a question. Efnisien nodded, grateful to not have to talk, and Arden rang it up and put it in a paper bag. He placed it on the counter instead of handing it to Efnisien.

‘I want to ask you something,’ Arden said. ‘You can say no. At any point. Not just now.’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said slowly.

‘I want to give you a hug.’

Efnisien blinked at him, something strange clenching in his chest. He stood there, unsure of what to say. When was the last time…? But Arden was staring there, not teasing or joking, his face one hundred percent serious.

‘You look so shocked,’ Arden said sadly. ‘Anyway, you don’t have to say yes. I’d just like to, okay? You’ve had a bad day, Ef, and I’d like to hug you.’

‘Uh,’ Efnisien said, standing there. ‘O…kay?’

‘Come on,’ Arden said, smiling at him ruefully. ‘I need something a bit more sure than that. I don’t want you to feel like I’m taking advantage of you. May I hug you?’

Efnisien nodded. He thought he might be panicking. He couldn’t tell if it was because he didn’t want one or he did. ‘Yeah,’ he heard himself say. ‘I mean, it’s your…your funeral, or whatever.’

‘Terrifying,’ Arden said, walking around the counter. He looked Efnisien up and down, not leeringly, but like he needed to be sure that Efnisien wouldn’t say no at the last minute. And Efnisien didn’t know what he was supposed to do, or how he was supposed to move, so he just stood there feeling paralysed and breathless and shocked.

And then Arden stepped closer to him, and then a bit closer, and wrapped his arms around the outside of Efnisien’s arms instead of going underneath them. _Like he’s the guy and I’m the girl,_ Efnisien thought. Arden was shorter, his hair coming up to Efnisien’s cheek. He moved his arms slowly around Efnisien’s back, giving him time to move away. It made a nice sound, hands moving over Efnisien’s jumper, making the cloth move over his skin. And then two palms were resting flat against him, one up on his shoulder blade, the other near the middle of his back. Arden’s chest pressed to his.

It was nothing like a bro hug. Not that Efnisien was familiar with those.

Efnisien stood there, staring ahead, his mind racing but never touching on anything for long enough for his thoughts to make sense. Beneath it, Arden was steady, embracing him, breathing slowly and evenly and right there. Right _there._ They weren’t quite breathing together, but they were breathing against each other. Arden’s hair smelled clean and herbal, he felt strong. He was short, but he felt strong.

As Efnisien wondered what would happen if he kind of leaned into it, just a bit, Arden tightened his arms and then let go and stepped back, looking up at him with a warm expression.

‘You feel good,’ Arden said. ‘Thank you for letting me do that.’

‘Uh. You’re… um. You’re welcome.’

_You don’t have to thank_ me.

‘I might ask again in the future,’ Arden said, walking back around his counter and pushing the book in its paper bag towards Efnisien, like he hadn’t just done something world changing. ‘You can always say no. A yes today isn’t a yes tomorrow.’

‘Sure,’ Efnisien said, taking the book. ‘Uh, yeah, okay. So, next week?’

He could still feel Arden’s arms around him. They’d just slid around him, careful and slow and sure all at once. Arden was used to hugging people. And then he’d stood close like he wasn’t nervous or shy or afraid of Efnisien, and Efnisien realised that he’d never actually given Arden a reason to be afraid of him. Not outside of warnings, he’d never really... Not really. And that kind of blew his mind. He could…

He could just never hurt Arden, maybe?

No, that wasn’t right. Hurting people was inevitable, wasn’t it?

Efnisien turned, confused, and went to leave.

‘Hey, Ef?’ Arden said, once Efnisien reached the door. He turned back, looking over his shoulder. ‘Take it easy today, okay?’

Efnisien nodded, turning the lock and opening the door. That was what Dr Gary had told him to do as well. Maybe if they both said it, he really should.

On the walk home, he kept playing the feeling of Arden’s hands on his back, over and over again. Strong and sure, warm and steady. Good, Efnisien realised. It was good. That had been really…

Really something.

He hugged the book to his chest and looked up at the canopy of the trees he passed, all their green leaves shivering in the wind, and felt something light and different inside of him. It was shimmery and it wasn’t bad. Not terrible. Not yet.

God, he had so much to talk to Dr Gary about tomorrow.


	10. Tantrum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God this fic came in with a golf club and just took me out at the shins like a cartoon character.

‘After yesterday’s events, how did last night go?’ Dr Gary said, after Efnisien had detailed a lengthy description of the events of the day before.

Efnisien drummed his feet on the floor and stared at the clock impatiently.

‘I dunno,’ Efnisien said, feeling agitated. ‘It’s crazy, right? Am I going nuts? Like…’

‘You don’t know how you were last night?’ Dr Gary said, with a steady patience that was so at odds with Efnisien’s energy, he threw himself back in the chair and scratched at the end of the armrest.

Since the day before, he’d not been able to stop thinking about the Uncosy Book Corner. He couldn’t get it out of his head that Arden was into that kind of stuff. He accepted a _hug_ from the dude. Did that mean he thought Arden was like Crielle? Maybe, unconsciously, he was trying to find someone _worse_ than her.

He kept feeling Arden’s hands sliding around him, felt them on his torso, around his sides, moving onto his back and it was so disarming. No matter what he started thinking about, Arden’s hands were there, like he was hugging him all over again.

‘Do you think,’ Efnisien said, ‘that I want to like- That I want to find someone like her?’

_Don’t bring her up. If you open the door, Dr Gary’s gonna thunder through it like a fucking horse hopped up on steroids._

‘I mean,’ Efnisien said quickly, cutting across Dr Gary opening his mouth. ‘Last night was fine. I read the book. I transcribed some stuff. I stayed up late. I made like, like…eight tallies on the whiteboard.’

‘What were the intrusive thoughts around?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘Berdella,’ Efnisien said shortly. He hated Berdella.

And then he sat there with his back against the chair and felt his whole mind go blank.

He…didn’t hate serial killers. They were his heroes. He idolised them. He read Berdella’s torture and murder logs to fall asleep sometimes when he’d been a child. As a teenager, he had sections of it memorised.

‘Were the intrusive thoughts arousing?’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien could suddenly see it so clearly. He could see what Dr Gary had been driving towards all this time. It scooped into him and pulled out something so important it could have been an organ. It felt so vital that Efnisien didn’t think he was even a person in the room anymore. He was just _nothing._

‘I think I hate them,’ Efnisien said, digging his fingers into the armrest. ‘I think.’

Dr Gary said nothing and Efnisien sat there thinking that something was wrong. Really, really fucking wrong.

‘I think?’ Efnisien said, his voice weaker. ‘That’s…’

Dr Gary said nothing. He didn’t even ask for a fucking number. Efnisien hated it more than anything. Whatever was going on, Dr Gary obviously thought it was important enough to say _nothing_ for. Efnisien glared at him, wished for that burst of rage that would make him fly out of his chair and do something awful. Venomous, spiky anger whirled inside of him, tore him up, then vanished.

And his thoughts were still the same.

‘Good old Bobby Berdella,’ Efnisien whispered, staring down at his knees. ‘The stuff he used to do…’

‘Were you thinking about that last night, Efnisien?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, feeling sick. ‘He liked all that bondage shit, you know. Arden said it’s not wrong. But it is. It is, right? Those people are fucked up.’

‘At the risk of you running out on me again,’ Dr Gary said, after a short, audible inhale, ‘I’d like to remind you that I think you’re ready to see Dr Ferguson, in a session _with_ me. I don’t think I’m equipped to talk to you about this in detail, but I can say that plenty of people healthily and consensually engage in BDSM in their lives to no ill effect. That doesn’t mean it’s something for you, Efnisien.’

‘I hate him,’ Efnisien said, barely hearing what Dr Gary was saying. ‘Berdella. He kind of has a name like a bacteria, don’t you think? Salmonella. Shigella. Rubella, but that’s a virus. Borgoriella. Turicella. Zobellella. Nicoletella. Kribbella, they found that one on the walls of the Roman catacombs, which is kind of badass. Kribbella catacumbae. Bartonella.’

Efnisien stopped and tried to shove away all the other names with the ‘ella’ suffix because he was annoying himself. He felt shaky. He wished he’d brought a bottle of water with him or something. Beyond the door, he could hear the receptionist typing. She always paused too long after the full stop key, like she had to look at the keys while she was typing, and then look up once she finished the sentence. She wasn’t a proper touch typist. She was _bad._

‘Your receptionist is shit,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘Did you always hate Robert Berdella?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, wanting to grab his hair and pull it. His heels scraped on the ground. ‘No. He was great. He was really great. Like… That was the dream, you know? If I could be like that. If I could be like him.’

‘May I ask you a question about Crielle?’ Dr Gary said.

‘I _know_ what you’re gonna say!’ Efnisien shouted. Outside the door, the receptionist stopped typing. A soundproofed room didn’t stop the sound of Efnisien’s shouting, even if she couldn’t make out what he was saying. God, his gut ached. It’d been so bad since yesterday. It wasn’t even running to the toilet or diarrhea, it just fucking hurt. He kept feeling echoes of that knife. It didn’t slip into him like butter. Crielle’s upper arm strength wasn’t that strong even if the blade was sharp.

‘What am I going to say, Efnisien?’ Dr Gary said. He never raised his voice. The only time he ever spoke slightly louder than normal was when Efnisien spaced out hard enough that Dr Gary had to repeatedly say his name to get his attention. Instead of shouting, he often snapped his fingers instead.

‘You’re going to say she made me think he was a hero or some shit,’ Efnisien said. He switched from gripping the armrest to gripping his wrist. ‘Right?’

‘Do you think she did that?’ Dr Gary said carefully.

‘I liked it,’ Efnisien snarled. ‘I liked it _back then.’_

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘Fuck _off.’_

‘I’d like a yes or no answer, if that’s okay. Can I ask you a-’

‘ _Yes,_ and _fuck you.’_

Dr Gary didn’t speak for about a minute. He was looking at his desk, so he must have been composing his thoughts, or trying to think of the best way to say something. Efnisien sat there going stir-fucking-crazy, trying not to think of everything he’d read that Berdella had written _himself_ into those fucking journals.

‘Let’s return to our friend, cognitive dissonance, for a moment,’ Dr Gary said eventually. ‘Is it possible that you enjoyed Crielle’s attention, but-’

_‘YES!’_ Efnisien shouted at him, then stood, grabbed his own chair – the heavy fucking chair which he did _not_ have the upper body strength to lift properly – and threw it halfway across the room.

Which wasn’t that far.

The receptionist hadn’t started typing again. The chair lay on its side. And Efnisien stood there, shaking and feeling so fucking stupid, and eventually his arm wrapped around his torso because his abdomen hurt from ribs to pelvis.

‘May I complete my sentence?’ Dr Gary said, looking at Efnisien instead of the armchair. The dude didn’t even flinch. Efnisien didn’t know how he managed it. But he didn’t even flinch. He just sat there like it was normal to throw an armchair made out of heavy wood.

‘No,’ Efnisien said roughly. ‘Yes, it’s fucking _possible_ that I liked her attention, but _hated_ …’

He couldn’t do this.

He couldn’t do this today or _ever._

Efnisien turned towards the door, and Dr Gary shifted abruptly. ‘Please don’t leave,’ he said.

‘Why?’ Efnisien said, turning back to him. ‘Because this is what you want? Me feeling like shit? Forever? Because that’s what I’ve _got._ Right? That’s all this is, _right?’_

‘Please wait five minutes,’ Dr Gary said.

‘So I can put the chair back?’ Efnisien said.

‘I want you to consider that, yes, things have been very difficult lately, but you’ve been slowly increasing your quality of life through your own efforts. That’s significant, Efnisien. It’s pro-’

_‘Progress?’_ Efnisien said, his voice rising again. ‘Don’t give me that _shit._ I got one haircut, the first in three years. I bought one fucking jumper. I’ve bought some books. I walked _outside._ So fucking _what?_ Everyone can do that shit! Everyone does that shit! What progress? What _fucking progress_ do you see? That I’m not killing people?’

‘You’ve never killed people,’ Dr Gary said, eyes narrowing.

‘Shut _up!’_

Dr Gary was silent again, and then finally he grimaced at Efnisien like he wasn’t happy with the situation either.

‘I’m sorry it hurts so much,’ Dr Gary said heavily.

‘What? It doesn’t- It doesn’t fucking _hurt,’_ Efnisien said, to Dr Gary’s extreme look of scepticism. The one Efnisien hated. And Efnisien hated the whole situation, because he thought he was going to cry and he didn’t understand why. He didn’t understand it at all. He’d been angry enough to throw the chair. He wanted to be angry again! It made everything so much easier.

Dr Gary said nothing and Efnisien stared at the chair, he thought he should probably pick it up, but it’d been pretty heavy. He shoved his hands deep into the sleeves of his jumper and heard himself breathing. Eventually the receptionist started typing again. _Slowly._

‘I know what you want,’ Efnisien said, staring at his feet. ‘You want me to admit that I didn’t like pretty much any of it. Not really. But that I did it all for her attention. I’ve known that all along. That’s your wet dream. That I’ll stand here and have some psychological abreaction over it all, and you can jerk off to it with your supervisor, that I had this massive breakthrough that just felt like _agony,_ and realise I’m more alone than I ever was.’

‘I don’t want that,’ Dr Gary said quietly, easily.

‘Then what do you _want_ from me?’

‘I want you to have a better quality of life,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I want you to understand the concept of self-forgiveness alongside the concept of self-condemnation. I think it will be necessary to reframe how you view Crielle, but your love for her is real, Efnisien. In fact, I think you have an incredible capacity for love.’

Efnisien froze, feeling like he was somehow in the crosshairs of a fucking rifle.

‘No one would be that loyal to someone for that long, if it wasn’t for an incredible, foundational capacity to love.’

‘God, I hate you so much,’ Efnisien said weakly. ‘You don’t pull your fucking punches.’

‘I don’t,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You don’t pay me to.’

Efnisien walked over to the chair to pull it upright, but the wooden frame was heavy and Efnisien’s gut was throbbing badly. He didn’t get the right grip on it and his fingers slipped. And then Dr Gary was there on the other side of the chair, helping him. Efnisien knew he was helping.

But having a psychologist that close to him had him skittering back into the bookshelves, his hands up, hitting the books so fast that he knocked the breath out of himself. Dr Gary stood on the opposite side of the chair, staring at Efnisien with wide eyes. Then he closed his eyes for a second, lifted the chair upright and put it back where it was.

‘I apologise,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I should have warned you.’

‘S’fine,’ Efnisien said. ‘Kind of feel like I’m going super crazy lately. Didn’t feel like this _before.’_

‘You can’t go back to what you had before,’ Dr Gary said, sitting back in his own armchair. He didn’t push Efnisien to sit, didn’t even gesture at the chair. Efnisien sagged back against the bookshelf and folded his arms. He was so tired.

‘Cuz I changed it,’ Efnisien said.

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You did.’

‘Turns out my love’s not that loyal after all,’ Efnisien sneered.

‘You were placed in an increasingly impossible situation,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Either way, you would have lost someone you loved. There was no outcome where you kept both of the people you cared for. You chose loyalty to your cousin, who was experiencing ongoing suffering at the hands of your aunt.’

_And me._

‘If Augus hadn’t put his fucking nose in our fucking _life,’_ Efnisien bit out, _‘_ then none of this would have happened.’

‘That’s possibly true. It’s equally possible that Gwyn could have killed himself, or that your uncle could have beaten him to death. But you can’t change the past, Efnisien. You didn’t even have to make the choice you did, to make sure Gwyn would win his case. But you did.’

Efnisien walked shakily over to the chair and sat down so heavily he grunted. ‘She was getting harder to deal with anyway,’ he said.

‘In what way?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Efnisien said. He really didn’t. He was done talking about that part of his life. He was done thinking anything complicated about it. So he hated a serial killer. So what? It didn’t mean anything.

‘Okay,’ Dr Gary said. ‘May I write some notes?’

Efnisien exhaled a breath of laughter in spite of himself. ‘A good session for notes, huh?’

‘Very good, actually,’ Dr Gary said. And then he waited, and Efnisien lifted his hand to indicate he didn’t care one way or another. Dr Gary turned to his computer and typed, and _he_ didn’t look at his keyboard, because he’d learned how to type properly at some point. Unlike that dumbfuck receptionist. Efnisien closed his eyes.

He felt a shiver of warmth around his sides, around the steel band that was his gut, and then he felt Arden’s hands over his jumper. Efnisien wished he could shrink into the touch, shrink into that memory. He could become tiny and ball himself into it, and then he’d vanish into nothing at all. He could be a cell amongst that warmth, bouncing and travelling aimlessly around it. His nerves recreated the feeling of Arden’s hands on his back, and Efnisien squeezed his eyes shut.

‘I don’t want him to be bad,’ Efnisien whispered.

‘Arden?’

Dr Gary didn’t miss a fucking beat. Efnisien paid him for _that_ too.

‘Do you really think I need to see that other guy? The other shrink? You know I’m gonna be shit around him.’

‘I expect you to regress,’ Dr Gary said, turning away from the computer and facing Efnisien again. ‘It’s normal, Efnisien. He presents a threat to you and I don’t expect you to trust him based on my words alone. I think meeting him will go some way to helping you. He’s very different to other psychologists you’ve known.’

_Dr fucking Henton._

‘I’ll be there,’ Dr Gary said. ‘If you like, I can brief him on your file notes beforehand.’

‘Whatever. Is BDSM really not about serial killers?’ Efnisien said.

‘I’m surprised you haven’t looked it up,’ Dr Gary said.

‘I don’t want to,’ Efnisien said, poking his fingers at the armrest, one after the other. ‘Don’t want to see anything about it.’

_That’s what happens if you betray the Queen,_ he thought.

‘She used to tell me how she’d kill me,’ Efnisien said, his voice so quiet that he barely heard himself. He didn’t want to make those words a reality. He really didn’t. He used to think it was hot. For a long time, he found it hot that she trusted him with that. He thought she was even hotter because she looked _that_ fucking beautiful, and carried all that rot and mess inside of her. She was the star, and he was the best damn satellite. Whatever it took, he’d worship her the way Lludd and her good-for-nothing son never would.

‘How old were you?’

‘She started when I was like, I dunno, five maybe. It was all speculative. Like, she was trying to tell me it was okay imagining what I imagined, cuz she imagined shit too. And then she’d share it with me, and tell me, like, that she’d never fucking do it to me, but that it was still fun to think about. And then she asked me to think of things I’d like to do to her.’

‘Did you think of anything?’

‘Not for ages,’ Efnisien said, feeling hazy. ‘Not for a few years. It was all…bedtime stories.’

‘Is this what BDSM and similar concepts like bondage make you think about?’

‘I guess,’ Efnisien said. ‘I dunno where Arden fits into all of that.’

‘Perhaps you could ask him where he fits into it, hear his side of the story.’

‘Do you think we’re moving too fast?’ Efnisien asked. ‘Am I like… You know, there’s avoidant attachment, and healthy attachment, and then he said I imprinted on him like a duckling.’

Dr Gary smiled. ‘I don’t think it’s up to me to decide it’s happening too quickly if it doesn’t sound toxic, and so far, it doesn’t sound toxic. Unconventional, perhaps, but very little in life is conventional, and I don’t tend to see the people living conventional lives as clients in the first place. If you think it’s moving too fast, you can tell him. If you don’t want his number, he told you that you could delete or block it. It sounds like he’s reminding you that you have a right to your boundaries. Do _you_ think it’s moving too fast?’

‘I really like him,’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t _like_ people.’

‘Listen, perhaps it won’t work out. Perhaps it’s moving too fast. Perhaps you’ll realise he’s not safe. You’re in a situation where you can talk to me about it once a week, sometimes twice a week. You can call me if you’re ever in danger or in a crisis. But perhaps it will work out. Maybe you’ll see that he’s a complicated person that you can enjoy yourself around. I think it’s a good sign that he called me even if you didn’t hand him the emergency sheet yourself. From what you’ve reported, he sounds like someone who has his own issues, but those issues aren’t intersecting negatively with yours.’

‘So basically whatever happens, happens,’ Efnisien said.

‘I think you’re in a relatively safe position to explore your connection to him, and that it’s a good opportunity for you to learn what that looks like these days.’

‘I could hurt him,’ Efnisien said.

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You could.’

Efnisien pressed his lips together. It was kind of good that Dr Gary didn’t pretend it wasn’t possible.

‘You said it didn’t sound toxic,’ Efnisien said. ‘But I have all this shit happening that feels like crazy-sauce. So like, what…does toxic even mean?’

‘That’s a really good question,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I think it will be good to talk about before we wrap up. First, I think it’s necessary to point out that you kicked off this snowball of events partly by deciding to leave the house yourself and buy a book. I think it’s entirely possible that you were heading towards a rupture of some of your beliefs before you met Arden. Ruptures are very painful, and until they’re repaired, they’re like psychological open wounds.’

‘I mean if you put it that way, I was heading towards a rupture of my beliefs when I shoved that USB into Augus’ pocket.’

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said, looking so impressed that Efnisien folded that expression into his mind like an origami crane, to look at later. ‘Exactly that. And you’ve been experiencing ruptures ever since. That’s not a comfortable process.’

‘You mean it sucks balls,’ Efnisien said.

‘We all have different ways of describing things,’ Dr Gary said, lips quirking up. ‘As it stands, some ruptures are more severe than others. As you gain more support, your unconscious mind may decide that you’re ready for ruptures of more deeply held beliefs. It’s not a very neat process, and sometimes your brain _will_ give you more than you can handle, which is why you have my number, and why we have regular sessions.’

‘Got it,’ Efnisien said. ‘So you’re saying that like, Arden came into my life, and things went to shit because a part of my brain decided that maybe I was ready to deal with more fuckery.’

‘It’s possible,’ Dr Gary said. ‘The reason it’s not toxic, is because it’s exposing you to truths in a graded sense, alongside emotions you’ve always had, Efnisien, but simply haven’t been ready to experience yet. You’re starting to realise the truth about aspects of your life. There are objective truths that you elide or avoid thinking about, as part of your Pure O, and also as a self-protection response. Now that you’ve started experiencing flashbacks, you-’

‘You mean intrusive thoughts,’ Efnisien said, glaring at him.

‘I mean what I said,’ Dr Gary said firmly, with the kind of expression that meant he wasn’t going to budge on it no matter what Efnisien said.

‘Flashbacks,’ Efnisien said in disdain, staring at him.

‘We’ll re-evaluate officially next week,’ Dr Gary said. ‘But yes, I expect that the shifting landscape I mentioned on the phone, will involve a significant increase in your post-trauma response alongside your Pure O.’

Efnisien knew he should fight it. He knew that in the past, he would’ve fought it. But he was too exhausted to pretend it wasn’t true. His mind was becoming a horrendous place to spend any time in, and not just because he worried about hurting fucking kids or daydreamed about hurting people.

‘It was easier before,’ Efnisien said.

‘I contend that if it was truly easier before, it wouldn’t be hurting you so much now to see it from a different perspective,’ Dr Gary said.

‘I contend that you’re an asshole who got his degree from a cereal packet. Might have been an expensive cereal packet, but still.’

Dr Gary smiled briefly, then talked a bit more about the rupture process, and Efnisien didn’t tune him out exactly, but he realised he was so goddamn tired. He felt Arden’s arms around him, but the sensation was getting weaker than before, echoing on itself until it began to fade.

‘Hey,’ Efnisien said abruptly. ‘If I want someone to like, uh, _god,_ hug me, or some shit, that doesn’t mean I’m gay, right?’

‘It doesn’t,’ Dr Gary said easily. ‘It’s normal for people to desire platonic physical affection. Our society tends to stigmatise that, especially among men. But no, it doesn’t make you gay.’

‘And you really think I should see Dr Ferguson?’

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said.

‘He’s not going to tell me I’m gay?’ Efnisien said.

‘Efnisien, _no one_ is going to tell you that your sexuality is something that you don’t think it is. That’s not the job of any professional. They can give you more information about the orientations that exist. Only you will know how you orient.’

‘I could be gay though.’

Dr Gary’s eyes flickered with something almost close to exasperation, and Efnisien almost laughed, except that it didn’t feel that funny.

‘Sorry,’ Efnisien said quickly. ‘You want to tell your computer that I’m neurotic?’

‘My computer already knows that you’re neurotic, Efnisien.’

Efnisien burst into laughter in spite of himself. The sound rasped out of his throat, and he placed a hand over his mouth. Dr Gary smiled, but he looked tired. Efnisien wanted to apologise again, and he was so annoyed at himself. What bullshit. Dr Gary was getting _paid._

‘I can’t afford a session that costs me a ton of money though. To see you and this other guy. Like, I can take on more hours, I guess, to pay…maybe. But…’

‘Dr Ferguson can offer you initial free sessions through the same scheme I use,’ Dr Gary said. ‘And I don’t think you need to see him in the long-term. I think this will be short-term, for clarity on issues I think you might need some extra assistance with. May I talk to him and tee up some dates for a session?’

‘Sure, can’t wait to walk out on a free session,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘If you want to walk out, you can walk out,’ Dr Gary said. ‘That’s always your right.’

‘Am I really a bad client?’ Efnisien said abruptly. ‘I know, I know, transference or some shit. But am I? Are you tired of me?’

Dr Gary’s eyes widened, and he looked at Efnisien in confusion. Then he frowned.

‘Have you felt that I’ve been tired of you this session?’ Dr Gary said.

‘The bit about me being gay,’ Efnisien said. ‘You looked kind of…frustrated with me.’

‘I’m frustrated with the situation,’ Dr Gary said, looking relieved. ‘When I say it’s not my area of expertise, I mean it, Efnisien. And the last thing I want is to steer you down the wrong path. A specialist with a better understanding of how to talk to you specifically about sexuality will know how to approach the subject. I have confidence helping you with your obsessional thinking, your intrusive thoughts, your trauma, and your destructive behaviours, but – and my supervisor agrees with me – a concurrent specialist to help you with issues around sexuality could be helpful. I can feel that you have more of a need for this assistance, increasingly, per session. But I still don’t have the resources to give you what you need.’

‘I don’t need much,’ Efnisien said. Then he winced. ‘Or is that just me trying to avoid seeing Dr Ferguson?’

Dr Gary gave him the thumbs up in agreement. Efnisien sagged a little in his chair.

‘Maybe it’s just not important,’ Efnisien said.

‘It might not be,’ Dr Gary said. ‘But it’s coming up, both with me, and with Arden. So it might be important just for now, all right? Have you felt that I’m tired of you at any other point?’

Efnisien shook his head, then shrugged. ‘You can be tired of me.’

‘I know,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I will have days where I’m very tired. The likelihood will be high that I’m tired because of things happening in my life, and that they’re not to do specifically with you. It was great that you asked me and gave me an opportunity to reply, instead of imagining something that wasn’t true.’

‘You have to tell me you’re not tired of me. Like, that’s your job. You have to.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Dr Gary said evenly, his eyes gleaming with something almost like pleasure. Like he was really happy this had come up, even though Efnisien wanted to be sucked down a shower drain, wanted to be sucked down all the way to the Mariana Trench and his octopus, Stupidhead, who was just floating down there waiting for him. ‘Efnisien, you are not forcing me to work with you. You are not making me. I am not dependent on your money and your money alone in order to live. I choose to work with you, as I choose to work with my other clients, both here and at Hillview, and occasionally in consultation with other specialists.’

Efnisien shrugged. But he felt better about it, all the same. He tugged on his earlobe, feeling awkward, and then stood. Dr Gary stood as well, and Efnisien felt like he should say something, but he didn’t have anything to say.

When Efnisien reached the door, Dr Gary cleared his throat.

‘Progress might be a bit of a dirty word right now,’ he said. ‘But Efnisien, you’re doing well. I’ll see you next week, okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, nodding. Then he opened the door, closed it, and ignored the _look_ the receptionist gave him as he walked out of the office. Whatever, if she _ever_ started shit with him, he was going to pull her through a fucking knothole made of her own goddamn incompetence.

*

The next morning, he ate crackers and peanut butter, then had a handful of walnuts. He spun his phone on his shitty IKEA table and finally picked the phone up and dashed off the text faster than he could rethink sending it.

_Are we friends?_ he sent.

_Do you want to be?_ Arden sent back.

_Do you?_ Efnisien sent, feeling like he was five years old.

_Yeah, Ef. I think we could do friendship._

Efnisien ran his teeth over his top lip several times, then bounced a little in his seat.

_I don’t want to fuck you,_ he sent. _Or be fucked. Idk how gay people talk about it._

_I can be friends with dudes without actually whacking my dick out every minute,_ Arden sent back. _It’s a miracle. A gay miracle._

Efnisien smiled in spite of himself. He could almost imagine the dry tone of voice Arden would use. Efnisien spun his phone on the desk a few more times, and then it buzzed with another message.

_Hey, you want to go to the beach later?_ It was followed by several wave emojis and one that looked like a sunset.

Then Arden sent another text:

_I can pick you up, drop you off. I have to be at the dojo by 7.30pm, have training tonight. But I have a few hours free before. I’m going anyway, so no worries if you don’t want to come._

Efnisien stared at his phone, his heart beating hard. Yes, he wanted to do that. Yes, he wanted to go to the beach even though the beach was fucking stupid. Yes, he wanted to be in someone’s car that wasn’t Crielle’s or Lludd’s or some fucking professional driver that his family had hired. He hadn’t been in someone’s car for three years. There were a few taxis that Hillview paid for, there were a lot of buses and trains.

Efnisien texted his address to Arden, then told him to let him know when he was there so Efnisien could come downstairs.

_Do I need to bring anything?_ Efnisien said.

Did people bring shit to the beach?

_Just yourself, Ef. See you later!_ Arden wrote.

Efnisien shoved his phone off the desk in nervous excitement and watched it clatter in its phone case on the floor.

‘The _beach,’_ he whispered to himself.

It was almost – he thought – like he had a life.


	11. Waves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Descriptions of past sexual assault. And for about five seconds this chapter is a songfic. (The song mentioned is the first song on the [Falling Falling Stars](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7GCCSe1PiZ8D2apCHPVpyk?si=oFi7siSYQ8qWulzUc9kglg) playlist).
> 
> I am never not screaming wildly about Efnisien and this story please join me fdslakjfs

It was fucking _cold_ at the beach.

‘What the fuck do you even like about the beach, anyway?’ Efnisien said, as they stood there at the peak of the soft, white sand-dune, looking down at the surf and the flat horizon that was the sea beyond it.

Efnisien heard a sound. When he looked down, Arden’s bare toes were scrunching into the sand over and over again. Efnisien’s toes scrunched down into his sneakers in response. Arden had taken his shoes off as soon as they’d gotten out of his car. Efnisien couldn’t believe it. He’d been hit by a blast of cold wind and shivered, meanwhile Arden was removing his socks and stuffing them into his sneakers with a pleased expression on his face.

‘Well,’ Arden said, tilting his head back and looking up at the cloud-studded sky above them. ‘I like the way the sand feels. Smooth and cushiony, but then crunchy when I pack it down with my footsteps, or when I press down with my toes. I like the fact that it’s mostly empty at this time of year. The only people around are like, folks who want to see the sunset, people walking their dogs, joggers, and all the tourists are probably off at a tourist beach.’

Efnisien thought this looked like a tourist beach too, even if there didn’t seem to be any tourists here, but whatever. He didn’t know dick about what beaches were popular and what ones weren’t. This one seemed pretty enough too.

He was amazed at Arden’s ability to take one of Efnisien’s rude, brusque sentences and respond like they were both making polite conversation. He never seemed to be threatened by Efnisien’s hostility, he never became defensive. 

‘I like the way the sea smells,’ Arden said. ‘Sometimes like seaweed, sometimes like salt, but always kind of fresh, unless there’s like a whale rotting somewhere.’

‘Gross,’ Efnisien said, looking around automatically. There were no whales rotting anywhere. It did smell kind of fresh, now that he thought about it.

‘So I take it you don’t really come to the beach much?’ Arden asked.

‘Second time I’ve been in my life,’ Efnisien said.

He could feel the way Arden looked at him. The shock that every local in the city probably felt, because the sea was close, it was practically a rite of passage for teenagers to go there on weekends or spend most of their summers there.

But Crielle had hated the beach and considered it uncultured. She said the people who held their champagne-laden events there were nouveau riche at best, and commoners at worst. Efnisien went to the beach once because there was a school trip and he’d been curious and he knew he’d never get to go with Crielle. He’d stood there under the then-blazing sun during the height of summer, covered in the grease of sunscreen, feeling disgusting. He’d stared at all of the people stripped down to their swimwear. He thought about hurting every single one of them.

Later, he tried to corner one of the students – Alicia – to grope her, but there hadn’t been enough time, she’d been too fucking cagey, and it’d been too hot to bother. He was angry enough to want to tear her apart, exhausted enough to want to sleep.

He never went to the beach after that.

Efnisien stared ahead blankly as he thought of how he’d ended up cornering Alicia later. She was already wary of him. He’d snapped her bra strap hard against her back and grabbed her breast and squeezed so hard that she’d made a squeaking noise. It’d felt soft and vulnerable in his hand, like a little animal, like he was squeezing a bird or a mouse to death.

He’d twisted his palm just to watch her eyes fill with agony, he’d mocked her for only being a B-cup, and there’d been a thrill racing and burning through him. He remembered how he’d laughed at her. He remembered taking his phone out of his pocket and snapping a picture of what he was doing, as well as her screwed up face, and told her that if she didn’t keep her mouth shut, he’d do way worse. _Way_ worse.

She kept her mouth shut. Efnisien deleted the photos later.

He snapped back to the present and looked sidelong at Arden to check if he’d noticed anything weird. But Arden was still looking up at the sky.

Efnisien wasn’t hard in his pants, he didn’t feel good about the memory. He felt neutral, apathetic. Alicia probably hated his guts. But whatever, she got a boyfriend like two years later and the dude fucking doted on her. Good for Alicia. He wondered if she had problems with dudes touching her boobs.

‘We didn’t have to come here, and if you don’t like it, we don’t have to stay,’ Arden said eventually. ‘Is there anything you like about the beach? I bet you can think of something. Just one thing?’

Efnisien quietly put a tally mark up in his head for Alicia and the way his mind had recreated all of it in fine detail. And then he concentrated. He automatically sought out five things he could see, listened to the four things he could hear.

‘I like the way it sounds,’ Efnisien said, his head clearing as he listened to the waves crashing, the wind moving around them, even as it found all the holes in the wool of his jumper and stung at his skin. ‘The sea. The wind. It’s noisy, but in a calm way.’

‘I like that too,’ Arden said warmly.

It was the first time they’d made proper conversation that afternoon. When Arden picked him up, he’d apologised immediately.

‘Sorry! I can’t talk while I’m driving and I can’t really listen to you either. It’s like a thing in my brain. I’ll have to put on music and concentrate until we get there. Hope you don’t mind!’

He didn’t even ask if it was okay. He just waited until Efnisien got in the car, put on his seatbelt, and then he turned up the music. Efnisien didn’t know any of the songs, and he sat there listening and staring out of the window. A lot were shitty love songs, but there was one whose lyrics arrested him immediately.

_‘I don’t even know what I want out of life, what I’m chasing.’_

Efnisien expected it to turn into a love song, but it never did. Midway through the song, he found himself staring at one of the speakers in Arden’s car, fixated on what he was hearing.

_‘I’m trying to be honest and live deliberately. But my mind’s so scattered with different parts of me. Is it delusional to think that I can do this? Does anybody want this?’_

‘Hey,’ Efnisien said. ‘What song is this?’

Arden pointed to his phone, which was streaming the music. Efnisien picked it up and thought the band name was stupid, what the fuck was Cub Sport supposed to be? But he made a mental snapshot of the band, its name, the song, the album cover, and put Arden’s phone back down. All too soon the song ended and was replaced with some girl singing about lost love like a loser. Efnisien sighed and leaned back in the chair, resigning himself to shitty background music.

When they were halfway there – according to Arden making a passing comment while they were stopped at the lights – Arden started singing. At first he only sang with the chorus, but then he was singing to all of the songs. Efnisien thought he had good pitch, he had good volume, and actually he had a good voice. It wasn’t professional. But it was better than listening to the songs themselves.

Without really noticing, he closed his eyes and focused on Arden’s singing the rest of the way there.

Now, the sound of the waves rising and falling filled Efnisien’s ears and mind. The wind curled around him – it was so fucking cold – and the sun was starting to set. It wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t great.

But Arden was here, scrunching his little toes down into the sand.

‘Come on,’ Arden said, walking down towards the waves.

‘What?’

‘You can take your shoes off if you want.’

‘It’s cold,’ Efnisien said, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, thinking that once he’d gotten some hair product, he’d get another jumper. Or maybe…something else warm. Gloves maybe. Gloves could be good. Be hard to tear someone’s face off if he was wearing gloves.

Arden gave him a look like he was studying him. Efnisien felt like whatever had happened during that hug last time was never going to happen again. Maybe this was a bad idea and he couldn’t have friends. He’d fucked up.

‘Okay,’ Arden said. ‘Wait there a sec.’

‘What?’

‘Just wait there!’

And then Arden took off back towards the direction they’d come. He sprinted across the sand, barefoot, like it was easy.

‘God,’ Efnisien said under his breath. ‘Look at that tiny dude go.’

Arden wasn’t _that_ short. But Efnisien and Gwyn were tall. Everyone in Efnisien’s family was tall. Arden was also kind of compact, he wasn’t lanky like Efnisien, or leggy like Crielle and even Gwyn. But maybe some of Arden’s compactness was muscle. Efnisien realised he’d never seen Arden’s bare arms, so he didn’t know for sure.

But he thought that Arden’s arms had felt strong when they’d wrapped around him.

Efnisien turned and stared at the sea, then rolled his eyes at himself. He focused on the thing he liked about the sea. The way it sounded. And now that he stood there, he also liked that the sand was more compact here and clearly damp, so at some point the waves had washed over it even though they weren’t coming up this high anymore. He liked the white lacy foam at the end of each wave surrendering to the shore. He liked the way the waves receded, like a monster was dragging them back, before another wave made its bid for freedom.

Strangely, he liked imagining that the Mariana Trench was somewhere out there. He imagined all those deep sea creatures and he thought that even though it wasn’t his, and it wasn’t even _real,_ he kind of had a deep sea creature of his own floating away in the back of his mind.

But the beach was so _fucking cold._

Efnisien’s jaw tensed, he grit his teeth together when he realised they wanted to chatter. He hunched down and felt so stupid. His ears hurt. The tip of his nose hurt. Arden didn’t seem that cold at all. Efnisien saw one person in the distance walking their dog – _don’t look at the fucking dog_ – in a shirt. A shirt!

A few minutes later Arden returned, sprinting back. Arden held up a long length of beige wool. A scarf.

‘Here,’ Arden said. ‘Can I?’

Efnisien’s mind blanked when he realised that Arden was offering to put it on him, instead of just handing it over to Efnisien. Automatically he nodded, even though the right thing to do would be to grab it like an adult and put it on himself. But Arden was offering, and Efnisien wanted to know what it would be like.

Arden stepped close to him and carefully slung the wool around his neck. Efnisien bowed his head to help, he stared at the sand beneath his feet in shock that this was even happening.

‘There,’ Arden said, looping the scarf twice around his neck, snug but not too tight, and then settled it around his shoulders, tucking the ends beneath the loops so they’d be less likely to be swept out wildly by the winds.

‘That’s better,’ Arden said. ‘That should help.’

Efnisien reached up and touched one of the soft loops of fabric around his neck and then thought of the book with its cover in the Uncosy Book Corner, showing the woman bound in ropes. He shied away from the image so violently that he twitched.

‘Next time you can bring a scarf,’ Arden said.

‘I don’t have any.’

‘No?’ Arden said easily, smiling up at him. ‘Did you have many when you were rich?’

Efnisien shook his head, smiling a little.

‘I wore a silk scarf once,’ Efnisien said, thumbing the thick, soft material. It was so plush he wanted to sink his hands into it. ‘It was white. It matched a white tux I wore to the opera.’

‘Which opera?’ Arden said, his hands still resting on the scarf, warm weights on Efnisien’s shoulders.

‘ _Die Zauberflöte,_ you know, _The Magic Flute.’_

‘I don’t know it,’ Arden said.

‘You don’t know Mozart?’ Efnisien said, staring at him.

‘I know Mozart. Sort of. Dude who liked maths and symphonies, right?’

Efnisien felt like they were worlds apart. Truthfully, he’d never liked opera, and he mostly went because Crielle enjoyed them so much. Efnisien would ignore the songs as much as he could, he’d stare into the crowd and imagine himself hurting people. During intermission, sometimes he and Crielle would flirt quietly with each other. He’d whisper things while holding a flute of champagne up to his collarbone, long fingers delicate on the stem. She’d blink slowly and cattishly at him, her voice sinful and rich.

Opera was a treat for both of them. Efnisien hadn’t been in years and years. He stopped going when he was sixteen.

Maybe they weren’t really flirting. But the way they talked sometimes, the things she dared to say to him, the things he dared to say back to her, he knew from the way they both talked in whispers that they weren’t the kinds of things that should be said in hearing distance of anyone else.

He was never allowed to touch her bare skin with his body, never allowed to touch her anywhere except her hand when he was escorting her somewhere. If they kissed, she initiated it, she decided when it ended. She laughed indulgently at him whenever he wanted more. He was never allowed to not want her mouth on his.

It didn’t happen often anyway, so he usually did.

‘It’s hard to believe you come from the background you do,’ Arden said, slowly letting go of the scarf. Efnisien wanted Arden to hug him so badly, but instead he settled for ducking his head so that his chin touched the scarf. ‘But you have this way of talking, an accent which shows off that high-end breeding no matter how vulgar you’re being. Even when you’re talking in your roughest edges, there’s still this… I don’t know. The white tux must have looked incredible. It’s actually not so hard to imagine you going to the opera.’

Efnisien didn’t know if it was a good thing or not. Most people thought the opera was pretentious. Efnisien mostly found it more distracting than listening to symphonies on their own. He just wanted to focus on the instruments in the orchestra _._ He wanted to find all the different threads of instrumentation and hold them just so in his mind. Opera ruined it.

Which was weird, because Arden singing along to the music before had made the music way more interesting.

Efnisien wanted to ask Arden to wrap his arms around him. But there was no reason to ask. Even experiencing the urge of wanting to be touched was alarming. He didn’t want to be touched. That wasn’t like him. He grabbed the ends of the scarf instead and held them in one hand and felt a little warmer, but not much. The scarf sort of helped, but Efnisien was getting chilled. The fact was, even in his apartment, sometimes his body temperature didn’t seem to know what it was doing.

After the day he’d had yesterday, the session he’d had today…

‘Come on,’ Arden said.

‘Where are we going?’ Efnisien asked, then followed as Arden walked along the shoreline. Efnisien looked at those vulnerable bare feet, amazed at how untouched Arden seemed by the cold. 

‘Now we walk,’ Arden said. ‘We make some conversation. Maybe we sit down somewhere. And then I get you home so I can get to the dojo.’

Efnisien stared at him, then walked faster to catch up. The little dude could be speedy when he wanted to be.

‘Do you go there a lot?’ Efnisien found himself asking.

‘I do by other people’s standards,’ Arden said, laughing. ‘But not mine. I used to go daily, sometimes twice a day. But god, it left me no time for the rest of my life, you know? And teaching it is hard. Like, you either kind of stay low-to-mid level, and then you never get paid well. Or you open your own school, but then you have to be _in_ the philosophy and practice and marketing of it twenty four-seven, and I didn’t want to do that. So I go three days a week and a big chunk of Sunday morning. I practice at home still.’

‘So you do the uchikomi and stuff?’ Efnisien said, remembering what he’d read in his book.

Arden looked at him and beamed. It showed his crooked bottom teeth. His brown eyes looked warm. ‘Yeah. Uchikomi, a lot of ukemi to stay fresh with it, moving through waza, that kind of thing. I have advanced kata I like to do. A lot of judoka find kata pretty boring, but I like it. Helps me focus. Kind of beds the practices down in my muscles so I don’t have to think as hard when I’m sparring.’

‘Because you’re like shorter, do you do a lot of um, the sacrifice techniques? Sutemi?’

‘No,’ Arden said, bursting into laughter. ‘God, it’s so weird, you talk like you know it, but it’s really just what you picked up from that book, isn’t it? You’re amazing. No, I don’t love sutemi, but I’m good at it. I mean you have to know sutemi-waza, especially if you’re competing. But hmm, there’s two things going on here. There’s what I like most and what I’m best at. I’m best at osaekomi-waza, which is pinning people and keeping them down. I _like_ kansetsu-waza the most.’

‘That’s…’ Efnisien squinted ahead. ‘Joint locking? Dude, that section was nuts.’

‘Mmhm,’ Arden said, as he dragged his toes along the damp sand. ‘If you put pressure on a person’s joint in the wrong direction, most people are basically paralysed, unless they’re hypermobile or something. People won’t risk a dislocation or a break, so they go really still. Locking the joint is so effective. But people see it coming, and they know it’s what I like to do.’

‘Jesus,’ Efnisien said, staring at him. He’d had an image of Arden being the kind of person who needed to throw himself down in order to throw other people down to the ground. But it sounded like he had no problems with any of the techniques. The idea was terrifying. It reminded him of Lludd’s violence, which was just barely restrained ultra-violence. No one in the world was like Lludd when he was mad. ‘And that’s all the grappling style too, not like, the standing style?’

‘That’s right,’ Arden said, smiling at him like he was pleased. Efnisien exhaled in relief, he hadn’t realised he’d gotten so tense. ‘That’s really good, how you remember all of that. And cool how you can weave it into conversation. Do you see it as paragraphs that you can read from your mind? Or something else?’

‘Like snapshots,’ Efnisien said, shivering and trying not to let how cold he was affect his voice. ‘Some paragraphs, yeah, but mostly I just remember keywords and then the description follows. What about you? You said you were kind of eidetic? Semi-eidetic?’

‘Yeah, depends on what I’m reading. I have to be really interested in the subject if it’s words, but they noticed it in primary school. I guess you could say my strengths are more visual though? For example, we passed three trees that had yellow flowers on the way here, and I could probably draw them pretty exactly, I know the exact shades of yellow. Four trees had lilac flowers. There were fifteen shrubs cut into topiary shapes, and seven of those were cut into balls. The others were squares, cut into a barrier hedge, and one of them looked sick.’

‘Wow,’ Efnisien said. ‘That’s kind of awesome.

Arden shrugged. ‘It’s why I can’t have conversations in the car. I mean it’s partly why. There’s already too much information coming in.’

‘Huh.’

Efnisien shivered again. The scarf wasn’t cutting it at all against the cold. But he was kind of liking that they were talking about random shit. The sun was dropping in the sky and he’d never seen a sunset at the ocean before. The sky was turning peach and pink as the sun moved closer to the water, the clouds changed shade as the light touched them at different angles. The sound of the waves never stopped. It was constant and almost unchanging. Some waves were a bit heavier than others, but they were all basically the same.

Absently, as they walked, he took an end of the scarf and wrapped it around his chilled nose and ears. He knew it looked stupid, but if he got much colder his gut was going to start cramping, and then it would be hard to stand upright. If his gut cramped hardly enough, he couldn’t stand straight, sometimes he couldn’t walk.

A couple of minutes passed and then Arden looked at him, looked at him again. He stopped walking and started laughing.

‘What?’ Efnisien said.

‘You’re _freezing,’_ Arden said, laughing harder. ‘Ef, please, you could’ve just told me. We can head back.’

‘We’ve only been here for like fifteen minutes!’

‘So? We’ll head back. I don’t know, we’ll go get some fish and chips for dinner or something. Ef, why didn’t you tell me you were so cold?’

‘It’s fine,’ Efnisien said, his voice was muffled because of the scarf over his nose, so he dropped it and winced. ‘I’m fine!’

‘Uh huh,’ Arden said, arching a thick brow at him. ‘No, you’re not. We’re going back to the car. I should’ve realised. You’re always in layers, even when it’s not really that cold. And you don’t have much body fat on you, so whatever warmth you get, it probably just vanishes really quickly.’

Arden traced their steps back along the shoreline, walking faster than before. Efnisien lagged about half a metre behind, ears stinging, and he saw their footsteps, the worn tread of Efnisien’s sneakers alongside the shape of Arden’s bare feet along the sand. In some places, waves had come and already washed Arden’s steps away, showing how frequently Arden walked right where the waves touched the beach. 

Arden’s feet were encrusted with sand. How did he put up with it? Didn’t it feel scratchy and gross? But he’d dug his toes into it whether it was wet or dry, like he enjoyed it.

‘We’re gonna miss the sunset,’ Efnisien said, as they swung up the sandy shore towards the path they’d taken from the carpark. The sand became uneven, and Efnisien thought with all the movement he should be warming up by now, but instead he just felt overworked and miserable.

‘Ef, I’m not the kind of guy to privilege seeing a sunset over making sure you’re not getting hypothermia because you think that’d make me happy. Sunsets happen _every day.’_

‘But-’

‘Hey, hey,’ Arden said, his voice quieter than before. He turned around so that he was walking backwards, looking at Efnisien, gaze focused. ‘Why are you fighting me so much on this? We’ll just find another way to spend the time together. That’s all. That’s no problem and it’s no bother. And the next time we come, we’ll make sure you’re wearing four thousand layers and thermal underwear.’

Arden grinned at him, did that stupid wink and turned so that he was facing forwards again. He charged ahead and Efnisien gave up trying to keep up with him. Dude walked like he was on a mission, and Efnisien wasn’t that fit. The sand was unpredictable beneath his shoes, sometimes compacting, sometimes sinking beneath his steps. His ears hurt badly no matter whether the wind was scouring them or not.

When they got back to Arden’s car – old but comfortable, bright red – Efnisien got into the passenger seat and hunched down around himself, glad to cut away the worst of the wind and the chill. He placed his hands over his ears, because even his cold palms weren’t as cold as they were.

‘So, okay, you have zero self-preservation instincts,’ Arden said softly, closing his own door and locking them into an insulated, quieter world.

‘I have a ton of self-preservation instincts,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘Nope, that ship sailed weeks ago. First, you tell me you’ve assaulted people and been cruel to animals, I think because I hadn’t been terrible to you yet and you were expecting it. Now you’re sitting here radiating icicle-vibes. What did you think would happen if you told me that you were uncomfortable?’

_You’d take me home, it’d be over, I would’ve ruined it._

Efnisien didn’t say a word.

‘Because for the record, what would’ve happened is this,’ Arden said, his voice even and patient. ‘We would have come back to the car. We’re still facing the beach, we can still see some of the sunset. I can talk to you as easily in my car as I can out there. Probably easier, because you won’t be distracted by your balls crawling back into your pelvis.’

Efnisien snorted in spite of himself. He pressed his lips together when he realised that the pain in his ears was getting worse. It was sharp and awful, digging down into his head like he had grubs in there, eating their way to his brain. He pressed his hands more tightly to his head and then looked at Arden in apology.

‘It’s not that I don’t want to listen to you,’ he said. ‘My ears are fucking killing me.’

Arden’s eyebrows pulled together, something like sympathy on his face. After a moment, Arden shifted in his seat, leaning closer.

‘How cold are your hands?’ he asked, holding out his own palms. Efnisien stared at them, then dropped one of his hands into Arden’s, pressing his skin to Arden’s palm for only a second before pulling his hand back.

‘God, you’re warm,’ Efnisien said, staring at him. ‘The fuck?’

‘May I place my hands over your ears instead? It should work faster against the pain. I didn’t realise you were so cold, Ef. Let me help you.’

‘Um,’ Efnisien said.

Yes. Yes, he wanted Arden’s hands on him again. Even for ten seconds.

He pretended to be thinking it over.

‘Yeah, maybe?’ Efnisien said. ‘If you think it’ll help?’

‘I do,’ Arden said firmly. ‘Here, lean in closer to me and drop your head down. It’ll encourage more blood towards your ears. If you bend in and stare down at the hand-brake, that’ll do it.’

Efnisien moved closer to Arden, his other hand dropping away from his ear. He hesitated, because he felt suddenly, strangely vulnerable. A violent image intruded, Arden looking down at the top of Efnisien’s head, and then smacking his palms as hard as he could against Efnisien’s ears, popping his eardrums. God. _God._

‘Are you sure?’ Efnisien said, and Arden nodded in encouragement. 

‘The pain will go away on its own,’ Efnisien said. It was getting worse. But even the pain in his gut went away eventually. Sort of. There was always a low grade of it there, a buzzing that never went away.

‘I know,’ Arden said softly. ‘Are you telling me that because you don’t want my help? Or because you don’t want to inconvenience me? If it’s the first, then we don’t have to do this. But if it’s the second, I’d really like it if you let me help you, Ef. You’re in pain.’ 

Efnisien scowled even as he bent his head. And then Arden’s hands were coming up, slowly enough that Efnisien had plenty of time to move away if he wanted to. Arden’s palms cupped carefully over his ears, then pressed in slowly until they were flat against the delicate skin and cartilage. 

Efnisien made a faint sound as the pain twisted, feeling disarmed, wishing that his head wasn’t pounding so much.

‘Shh, it shouldn’t take more than a minute or two,’ Arden said quietly. ‘My mum gets it. Cold wind otalgia. It can get really bad. I remember she used to get me to put my hands on her ears sometimes. These days she just doesn’t go out into the cold wind enough to have to worry about it.’

Efnisien wanted to nod, but he didn’t dare move. Arden’s hands were warm. His touch was gentle and careful. Sometimes Arden moved his hands, not to stroke or caress, but to find a warmer spot on his palms or fingers, because Efnisien’s ears were cooling them down faster than his ears were warming up.

He could hear Arden’s touch. Just like he could hear the sound of the shirt and jumper moving over his body when Arden hugged him. He could hear Arden’s fingers moving the hairs on his head. He could hear Arden’s palms moving over his ears. Arden’s thumb rested in front of his ears, near Efnisien’s cheeks. His fingers lightly touched above Efnisien’s ears.

‘Your hair’s really soft,’ Arden said quietly.

‘My cousin’s is softer,’ Efnisien said, without thinking.

He tensed a little, but Arden didn’t say anything about how weird those words were.

‘This isn’t an inconvenience to me, Ef,’ Arden said. His voice was only a little muffled, because he wasn’t trying to stop Efnisien from hearing. If anything, the pressure was only very light. If he pressed any harder, Efnisien’s ears would have stung too much. ‘I like being able to take care of people. I like being able to help. If you’d told me you were uncomfortable or too cold, and I thought of a solution that allowed us to keep hanging up, that actually feels really good. And being able to do something like this… Ah, well, I like it.’

‘If you say so,’ Efnisien said, unsure what to think about it.

‘Do you think that’s weird,’ Arden said, ‘given you used to like hurting people?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, trying not to cringe away from Arden’s words. He felt too open, too stripped bare, to talk about anything like this now. ‘I think it’s weird that you want to help _me.’_

‘Okay,’ Arden said. ‘Do you still want to hurt people? Have you thought about hurting me? Did you ever sexually assault men?’

‘Dude, what the fuck?’ Efnisien whispered, staring down at the hand-brake.

‘Am I not allowed to ask about it?’ Arden said. He didn’t sound offended or angry. He sounded neutral, like this was a normal subject. But he could also just easily draw his arms back and punch them into the side of Efnisien’s head if he wanted to.

Efnisien tensed.

‘No,’ Efnisien said, his voice strangling. ‘Shit, I just don’t get asked- Um, yeah sometimes I do still want to hurt people. But not like before. Yes, I’ve thought about hurting you, but not like, realistically. And not because I _wanted_ to. The thoughts just come, and I have to remind myself they’re just thoughts, and eventually they go away. I hate them, honestly. My brain just does shit, random fucking shit, and it used to make a lot more sense, but these days not so much.’

Efnisien bit the inside of his cheek. That wasn’t answering all of Arden’s questions, was it? He felt like he had to say something, as payment for how nice Arden was being.

‘I mainly sexually assaulted women,’ Efnisien said, ‘but there’s been some men.’

‘But you’ve never raped anyone,’ Arden said, like he was double checking.

‘I’ve never had sex,’ Efnisien said.

Arden’s hands twitched against his head, and Efnisien felt a spike of embarrassment.

‘Have you wanted to?’ Arden said.

That question was surprising. He started to look up, but Arden shifted the pressure of his hands, fingertips pushing gently on the sides of Efnisien’s head, encouraging him to keep his head down. Efnisien’s neck lost some of its tension, he closed his eyes.

The warmth against his ears was helping already. The sharpness was subsiding into an ache that he felt through his cheeks, across his forehead, through the back of his head. But it wasn’t as wretched. He couldn’t believe he used to be so fascinated by pain, because he hated how much of it he had these days, like it was the only thing his body wanted to make, if it wasn’t allowed violence.

‘Um,’ Efnisien said. ‘I dunno. Don’t really see what the big deal is, honestly.’

‘So then why…?’ Arden made a sound in his throat. ‘Sorry, this is probably annoying and invasive, I ask a lot of blunt questions and you don’t have to answer any of them pretty much ever. But then why did you assault people?’

‘Because I wanted to hurt them,’ Efnisien said. At that, he did look up. He moved away from Arden’s touch, no longer feeling comfortable enough to accept it. He felt empty and sore. He sat back properly in his chair and faced the glovebox. ‘Because I wanted to hurt them, Arden, and that’s one of the fastest ways to violate someone if you only have a short amount of time to get your work done.’

Arden folded his hands in his lap, Efnisien sat there and felt strange. His head fucking hurt. At least he wasn’t as cold as before. His body sometimes shivered from head to toe, a full body shudder. 

‘I don’t know if you like to play with fire or what,’ Efnisien said, feeling exhausted. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, I haven’t thought about sexually assaulting you. If you’re worrying about it, don’t see me. I told you- I _told_ you. I told you I wouldn’t even come back to your store, if you didn’t want me to. I don’t know what you want from me.’

‘Have you been sexually assaulted?’ Arden said.

Efnisien jolted in his chair, eyes wide, swallowing his shock down like it was a rock in his throat.

‘What the _fuck?_ Why, have _you?’_

‘Yes,’ Arden said.

Efnisien stared at him. Arden sat there, unusually still, watching Efnisien steadily.

‘Yes,’ Arden said. ‘I have.’

‘Then _why the fuck are you seeing me?’_

Arden didn’t blink for a long time, his face was doing that hollow thing. Now that Efnisien was used to it, the expression didn’t alarm him like it used to. Not in the same way.

‘Am I some kind of test?’ Efnisien said, his voice getting louder. The idea that all of this, all of their connection so far, was nothing more than a way for Arden to deal with something that had nothing to do with Efnisien, felt awful. ‘Are you testing yourself? Is that it? I don’t want to be a test. I want to go home.’

Arden blinked rapidly a few times, like he was coming back from somewhere, and then he frowned. ‘I’m not testing myself by seeing you. I like you. I don’t feel any threat from you. I think you could _try_ and sexually assault me, but you won’t get very far. And I believe that you don’t want to in general. I believe you, Efnisien. You’re not some kind of test.’

Efnisien stared at him, and Arden’s face twisted from whatever he saw in Efnisien’s expression.

‘Ef, do you want to go home?’ he said. ‘Should I take you home?’

‘I…’ Efnisien rubbed at his forehead. He was so confused. ‘I dunno. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Can we just fucking not? Please? Or am I not allowed that? Because I did this shit in the first place? So we have to talk about it? Is that it? I don’t get a choice, do I?’

Of course he didn’t, he deserved way worse. _Way_ worse.

He knew…

He knew what those sites said.

And what, he couldn’t handle a little conversation about it? About what he’d _done?_

‘No,’ Arden said, sounding shocked. ‘No, Efnisien, of course we can stop talking about it. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘Sure,’ Efnisien said, leaning against the passenger seat door and staring out of the car. The wind pushed it every now and then, so that the car trembled. ‘Sure you didn’t.’

‘I really didn’t. I find some things a lot easier to talk about than the average person,’ Arden said. ‘And I think I assumed that because you’d brought some of those things up with me so early into us knowing each other, I assumed… I don’t know what I assumed. I’m sorry.’

They sat there in silence for some time. Efnisien was only slightly mollified. He felt bruised inside. Arden’s apology sounded genuine, but Efnisien felt bad that Arden said it at all. Efnisien was the one who was supposed to feel awful all the time. He’d assaulted people. Men and women. He’d hurt animals. He’d done…whatever he could do.

Dr Gary would say that Efnisien made choices to avoid doing ‘whatever he could do’ every day. He’d say that Efnisien almost always chose the ‘milder’ route, even if that route still ended in assault.

It sounded like bullshit. 

_Have you been sexually assaulted?_

The question echoed unpleasantly.

According to Dr Gary, Efnisien was sexually abused as a child. They’d argued about it. Efnisien remembered arguing with him even back when his mind was dulled from all the drugs they were giving him and he was more pliant and complacent and told them just about anything they needed to know. He remembered in the second session, right before Dr Gary turfed him off to Henton – _don’t think about that_ – that Dr Gary insisted that Efnisien was a victim of child abuse and child sexual assault.

Bullshit. Bullshit. What bullshit.

Efnisien didn’t consider anything Crielle had done to be sexual assault – it was just kissing, for fuck’s sake. It was just kissing. So what if it was more familiar than average? So what if it was intimate? It never led to _sex,_ so it wasn’t fucking _sexual assault._

But even if Efnisien knew she’d never abused him, he knew he couldn’t say ‘no’ to Arden’s question anymore. Everything had changed at Hillview. First that group of teens who had jumped him in the first few weeks of his being there, sending him briefly back to the hospital. And then Henton. Dr fucking Henton. A memory of Dr Gary asking him questions about what had happened and making it very fucking clear indeed that Henton had violated him, more than once. He’d used the word violated, and for some reason Efnisien had just started shaking and shaking, but couldn’t say a word, even though he was so angry with Dr Gary for bringing any of it up that he could’ve killed him. Wanted to fucking kill him.

_Patient is nonverbal._

But it was never sex. So that was something. Whatever.

It was something.

‘Hey, Ef, can you give me a number between one and ten?’

‘Four,’ Efnisien said thickly, then glared at Arden. ‘Also, fuck you.’

Arden looked at him in concern and shock, and Efnisien realised he’d been trying to help, and he was just doing what was on the emergency sheet, and he wasn’t Dr Gary at all. Efnisien pressed his thumbs into his forehead.

‘I mean not really,’ Efnisien said, realising that the kind of things he said around Dr Gary, he probably couldn’t say around someone he wanted to be friends with. ‘Not really. I’m just used to hearing it from my therapist. Not from anyone else. He lets me swear at him, because actually he’s kind of an asshole. Look, my brain is just… It does that thing, it fixates on something and I kind of space out a bit. That’s the way it goes, you know.’

‘Okay,’ Arden said. ‘Can I ask you for numbers though, sometimes?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘Didn’t mean to space out on you like that.’

‘I know,’ Arden said heavily. He laughed, but the sound was miserable, and when Efnisien looked over, Arden was leaning his head against the steering wheel. ‘I can’t believe I’ve done this two days in a row. It’s really not like me.’

‘Done what?’

‘I pushed you way past your comfort zone yesterday, and I did it again today,’ Arden said to the steering wheel.

Efnisien stared at him, and then tilted his head. ‘Maybe consider that I was an inpatient in a psychiatric facility for like nearly a year, and am still an outpatient and need like, all-the-time therapy, and you’re probably _not_ the fuck up, here.’

_You’re my only friend,_ Efnisien thought.

He stared down at his hands where they rested, tense, on his knees.

‘No, but I’m pushing you,’ Arden said, sitting up straight. ‘And I normally do that under very different circumstances. That’s definitely my shit, not your shit. I think it’s partly that you remind me of someone and so maybe I’m pursuing something…around that. I guess I can talk to my therapist about it.’

Efnisien stared at him in surprise, and Arden’s eyebrows lifted at him in amusement.

‘Oh yeah,’ Arden said, grinning. ‘You don’t have the monopoly on therapy, my friend. Anyway, I think the other part is that we have this push-pull. Maybe I’m the only one who’s noticing it. But you’re way, way softer than you come across. So I push back against the image you put across, but it’s not who you really are. The person I thought you were isn’t super compatible with someone who’d force himself to just walk along the shoreline while he got a goddamn migraine from how cold his ears were, while not saying a single word about it.’

‘I’m not soft,’ Efnisien said indignantly. ‘Ask any of my fucking victims. Shame the dead animals can’t speak.’

‘Yeah,’ Arden said, tapping the steering wheel a few times while staring at him, eyes narrowing. ‘That’s kind of what I mean. This is what you do, and it’s…’ Arden circled his finger towards Efnisien a few times. ‘But, no, okay. I’m still talking about it and that’s not fair. I’m baiting you. And you think you’re baiting me, but you don’t hold the upper hand in these conversations. I’ve upset you a few times. You…have never really returned the favour. You’ve only ever upset me when you used hate speech that first time – and like, I was just bored of you when you did it – and when you’ve had freak outs because of actions _I’ve_ taken. You’re so easy to bait.’

Efnisien stared at him. Arden smiled softly, then shrugged.

Several retorts came and went, Efnisien didn’t bother speaking any of them. Arden didn’t speak like he was trying to prove himself, he spoke with a quiet confidence. But once more, Efnisien was left feeling like he didn’t know what to do, what to say. More minutes passed, the sun dipped down below the sand dunes covered in vegetation that blocked the beach and shoreline from view. The sky had turned to gentle pastels, the blue darkened as twilight settled over the carpark.

‘Do you even want to be friends with me?’ Efnisien said.

‘Yeah,’ Arden said. ‘But I don’t know if it’s good for you to be friends with me. And I should probably be upfront and say that I _am_ attracted to you. I don’t have to ever act on it, that’s fine, but I think it’s unfair of me to keep it from you. I don’t know if we’ll ever have an equal power balance in this friendship. Because even if _I_ want that, you behave in ways that undermine your own power, and while I can try and look out for the both of us, the fact is…I’m not perfect, Ef.’

‘Did I suddenly start paying you for a psych session? Because if I didn’t, you can fuck right off,’ Efnisien bit out.

‘This is the way I talk. You’re not seeing customer-service-Arden today. You’re seeing me. And I’m still cheerful, I’m still enthusiastic about stuff, but I’m also this person. In about an hour and a half, I’m going to go to the dojo and train past closing because I need to do something with all my excess energy, and it won’t be for the first time.’

‘But you still want to be friends with me?’ Efnisien said, double checking.

‘Yeah,’ Arden said, laughing.

‘Okay. Well. Um, but you’re talking like I really shouldn’t…hang out with you. Why? Because I freaked out? Like, okay, _egomaniac_ , I’m gonna do that _anyway._ Hate to break it to you, but even people who’ve never talked to me their entire lives can make me freak out sometimes. And as for you holding the power in the friendship, I don’t care. Holding power in friendships and shit isn’t good for me when _I’m_ the one doing it. I mean, maybe what you’re doing isn’t the answer. Being baited by you is kind of _shitty,_ honestly.’

‘I know,’ Arden said. ‘I’m really glad you told me that.’

‘God, you’re exhausting.’

‘I know that too,’ Arden said, laughing that silly little laugh. Efnisien absolutely did not like it. Because it was fucking stupid.

‘There’s a lot you’re not telling me, isn’t there?’ Efnisien said, running his finger along the glovebox absently. ‘Like, about you, your stuff, who I remind you of.’

‘Yeah,’ Arden said, sighing heavily. ‘I’ll tell you some of it. Do you still want to go home? Or do you want to get something for dinner? Fish and chips? I’m still up for it if you are.’

‘I can’t eat battered stuff,’ Efnisien said. Then he groaned in frustration. ‘I’m kind of…probably going to be a pain in the ass to feed.’

‘Grilled fish?’ Arden said.

‘What? Um. Probably. I guess.’

‘All right,’ Arden said, turning the key in the engine. The car started with a gentle rumble. ‘Well, the place I’m thinking of offers grilled fish, along with salads if you can’t have chips. So give me your final answer, Efnisien ap Wledig, am I taking you home? Or are we getting dinner?’

‘Dinner,’ Efnisien said without hesitation.

Whatever. Just because the whole afternoon had been weird didn’t actually mean a fucking thing.

His whole life had been weird.


	12. Sparklers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note: Graphic vomiting. Intrusive thoughts as per usual. Also Arden’s entire backstory, because unlike Efnisien, Arden just rips that shit off like a Band-Aid. Mention of suicide. (I've updated the main tags).
> 
> This one caught my beta in the feels and made her cry so dslakjfas

Efnisien picked at his grilled fish with his fingers, because there were no utensils, because it turned out they were eating in Arden’s _car._

It was partly Efnisien’s fault. They’d gotten to the fish and chips shop, which wasn’t a restaurant, or even a café, but literally a place where people ordered their food and stood around waiting for stuff that came out either wrapped in butcher’s paper or thin card boxes and Efnisien realised it was like street food but _not fancy._ The idea of standing in there for fifteen minutes waiting for food while people randomly walked in and out, made him freeze up.

‘Thing is,’ Efnisien said, when he’d realised what the place was like, pressing back into the seat like he could vanish into it. The car was so much warmer now. Arden cranked the heater, stripped down to only a shirt – his arms were pretty muscular – and then stared at Efnisien in amazement when he’d kept on the scarf and his jumper and enjoyed the heat the entire five minutes there. ‘Thing is I kind of, like, until I went into your bookstore, I basically hadn’t gone anywhere except my appointments for a few years. So like, I have ah, I guess what Dr Gary calls moderate agoraphobia.’

Efnisien listened to himself and rolled his eyes.

‘God, I’m such a wanker,’ he added. ‘Look, you don’t have to-’

‘It’s normal to eat this stuff in the car when the weather’s like this,’ Arden said. ‘There’s no reason for us _both_ to wait in there. You want me to come back with a menu?’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Efnisien said. ‘Get whatever you want.’

Arden squinted at him, then got out of the car and left him in there, in the heat, like it was – again – bizarrely easy to do.

Now, Arden ate battered fish and chips with his fingers, leaning against his seat. He dipped each of his chips generously into the tartare sauce, and had stolen Efnisien’s little plastic cup, because Efnisien didn’t see himself eating it.

‘I’ve gotta ask,’ Arden said, swallowing down the rest of a chip. ‘Is it an eating disorder? Or something else?’

‘Something else,’ Efnisien said. The fish was actually okay. Like, it was fucking _hammered._ But it was salty and it was the richest food he’d eaten in maybe a year and a half. That made him fear what his guts might do to him later. It didn’t taste super oily, but it was just so rich. It wasn’t anything like oatmeal or walnuts.

‘Can’t tolerate fats and stuff?’ Arden said.

‘I dunno, it’s unpredictable. I eat like, small meals, and stay away from too much oil and sugar and stuff. And dairy. And I dunno, basically anything that has flavour.’

‘Oh shit,’ Arden said. His mouth was already full with a giant piece of battered fish.

‘I know right?’ Efnisien muttered. Arden had bought him a side salad, and Efnisien ate the cherry tomatoes. He picked up each one and popped it in his mouth, between his teeth. They were bright red and shiny, but they popped like flesh, and Efnisien thought of eyeballs bursting viscously in his mouth, the goop sliding over his tongue like viscera. He swallowed the seeds, disgusted and thrilled.

Arden insisted on paying, and Efnisien knew the right thing to do would be to give him money. But doing that would hurt his bank account. So he decided he’d buy an extra book some time to make up for it. But that probably wouldn’t make up for it. Maybe he could bring Arden something to eat at the bookstore.

Efnisien felt bad at the way he ate. He knew it looked like he wasn’t enjoying himself, and he didn’t know how to explain to Arden that it was always like this. 

He was kind of bad at food. He always had been. Not like Gwyn. But Gwyn was bad at food because Crielle wanted him to be. Like what the fuck did she think would happen if Gwyn always ate everything she put in front him? He’d fucking die. And while Efnisien knew she had a boner for murdering her own son, what would she have done when she ran out of Gwyn to destroy? Woman could plan everything to the nth degree, but when it came to Gwyn she got stupid.

‘Have you seen doctors about it?’ Arden said.

Efnisien exhaled a breath of bitter laughter. ‘Oh yeah. Yeah. I’ve seen doctors about what makes me shit at eating.’

He’d seen a bunch of surgeons about it, too.

Apparently four worked on him at the same time. The surgery lasted eight hours. He told Gwyn that Crielle didn’t mean to kill him, but she sure didn’t mean for him to live a good life afterwards.

_‘I hope you die,’_ she whispered in his ear, like she was standing right beside him. Efnisien shuddered.

‘Do you have a diagnosis or anything?’ Arden asked.

‘You’re a question machine,’ Efnisien grumbled.

‘I _am.’_ Arden said.

‘Fine. Then if you can dish it out, you can fucking take it for once. What the hell is your story, anyway? Who am I reminding you of?’

‘Can I finish my meal first?’ Arden said politely.

‘Did you let me finish mine?’ Efnisien said, staring at him.

‘Ooh, okay, that’s a fair point. Still, I’m going to finish my meal first. Shame you don’t have any boundaries, you could have just told me you didn’t want to talk.’

‘What the fuck?’ Efnisien said. Arden laughed, and Efnisien threw a piece of carrot at him. Arden caught it and ate it, still laughing, brown eyes practically sparkling. He looked so pleased with himself. Efnisien scowled at him, then went back to eating and thought that maybe he felt…kind of good actually. He felt kind of okay.

The whole car smelled of _fish,_ that part he could do without. But they were also in the warmth, they were in a carpark that looked over the beach. Efnisien couldn’t see the waves, but he liked that the world beyond the fence and the footpath looked like a black abyss.

‘Tell me about jellyfish,’ Arden said. ‘I can’t make conversation, I’m too busy making sure I regret eating this much while training later.’

‘Just tell them you’re carb loading.’

‘How do you know about carb loading? You look like you’ve never seen a carb in your _life._ ’ Arden said, squinting at him.

‘Cousin was a wrestler, though he mostly beefed up with protein and stuff. Ate a lot of chicken.’ In secret. Away from Crielle.

‘Are you trying to deflect from the fact that you haven’t read anything from that jellyfish book yet?’

‘I got it _yesterday,’_ Efnisien said, staring at him.

‘Okay. Good point,’ Arden said. ‘I apologise. I’m used to a whole week going by before you come to get a new book.’

‘It’s cool. I read it already,’ Efnisien said, shrugging.

Before Arden could interrupt him, Efnisien began sharing jellyfish facts. It was easier to remember everything, because he’d literally read the book the night before. He talked about stinging cells called porins, and how zinc gluconate was okay at stopping porins from punching holes into red blood cells, but hot water was good at neutralising stings too. He talked about how it was a myth that jellyfish would rule the world because of climate change, because jellyfish were unpredictable and there were tons of species, so even if some survived, tons of others would go extinct, and were going extinct right now. He talked about how stinging cells were basically encrypted, and way more complicated than anyone thought. He talked about salps, the vegetarians of the jelly world, and that a bloom of them in 2008 had created so many salps that if someone lined them up, they’d reach halfway to the motherfucking _sun._

‘Wow,’ Arden said.

‘Forty trillion salps,’ Efnisien said. ‘And then they like run out of food and they all die at once. Like bam, whoops, we ran out of food and we don’t have a brain and right now it’s really obvious. And then they all sink at the same time like losers and literally turn the sea into goo. Literally like, gross jelly lakes on the ocean floor.’

‘I’m so glad I’m done eating,’ Arden said, laughing lightly. ‘That’s disgusting.’

‘It’s so gross!’ Efnisien crowed. ‘Oh my god. Also I like to imagine some dumb-fuck high-school intern having to count all the salps. I know they just quantified it with maths. But still. Imagine losing your place counting to forty trillion.’

‘Salp is a great word though.’

‘Yeah, it’s a dyslexic slap.’

Arden snorted, then reached out for Efnisien’s tray of food. ‘You’re done, huh? Let me put that in the bin for you.’

Efnisien handed it over, and Arden left the car again. Efnisien watched him _jog_ to the bin, and _jog_ back again. He’d never seen someone with so much energy to burn. When Arden returned, he immediately reached down, pulled a lever and pushed his car seat all the way back, then reclined it. He turned onto his side and yawned, squirming down into the seat to get comfortable.

‘Okay,’ Arden said. ‘So let me tell you a story.’

Efnisien swallowed, suddenly nervous. ‘You don’t have to say anything.’

‘I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do,’ Arden said steadily. ‘I know that better than you do, Ef. But thanks for the reminder.’

‘I just mean-’

‘It’s cool. But if you need me to stop talking, tell me. It’s not an easy story, and I think it’s going to be hard for you to hear, given…some of your stuff.’ Then Arden pushed up, looking at Efnisien like something had just occurred to him. _‘Actually._ You seem to find it really hard to tell me when you want or don’t want things. Would you agree to a signal? Like a safeword?’

‘A what-word?’

Arden stared at him for a few seconds, and Efnisien knew it was something he was supposed to know. ‘Like a signal to let me know that you don’t like the conversation, but you can’t say ‘I don’t like this anymore’ so you just shorthand it with like a word or a hand signal or something.’

‘Oh, like this?’ Efnisien stuck his middle finger up at him. Arden burst into laughter, slumping back onto the seat.

‘A little like that, yeah. I mean, you could do that if you want.’

‘It’s kind of rude to interrupt a story that way,’ Efnisien said. ‘I could use my index finger. Is that really something people do? It sounds stupid.’

‘It’s not stupid at all,’ Arden said. ‘It might feel strange. But if it’s easier than _telling_ me explicitly that you need me to stop talking, then try it and see what happens. Like, if you-’

Efnisien held up his index finger and grinned when Arden stopped talking. Arden stared at him, Efnisien stared back, trying to hold back from laughing. Arden’s expression changed from shock to that bright amusement of before. 

‘You, Sir, are an unholy terror,’ Arden said.

‘I mean, yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘I gave you my resume when we met.’

‘But hey, you’ve proven you can use it. That’s really good. You get the concept really well. And you know I’ll stop talking when you use it, now that you’ve tested it, so you can trust in me when it comes to this. I expect that you’ll use it in the future if you need me to stop talking about something, okay? I’d really like to trust you with that.’

It was like Arden took hold of the whole situation and punched it inside out, and Efnisien was left sitting there, suddenly very sure that he wasn’t going to use the signal as a joke anymore. After a beat, let his hand rest on the car seat. Arden watched him, then nodded as though satisfied. 

The wind still rocked the car. It was wilder than before, as though the sun setting had cut all the ropes holding it back and unleashed it upon the world. Efnisien wanted to curl up on his seat the way Arden was laying down on his, but he was too tall to do it comfortably. He rested his head on the headrest, contemplating the ceiling of Arden’s car.

‘Okay,’ Arden said. ‘So let me tell you a story. You remind me of my brother. You reminded me of him the moment you started out caustic, then told me that you were in therapy and that you were trying to change. My older brother. I thought the world of him. In a completely like, Disney kids movie kind of way. He was the best person in my entire life.’

_Was,_ Efnisien thought. _Past tense._

‘Laurie was like…kind and enthusiastic. I guess like me, but he was quieter and more settled as well. He took all of my energy in stride, though. He’d bring me sparklers and we’d set them off together in the back garden, and he’d watch me running around in circles screaming and take photos of me. He’d come up with games to help me burn off all of my extra energy. He was the one that suggested judo to Mum. Basically, like, he had my back. For ages. He had my back for ages. And if he seemed sad sometimes, so what? And if he couldn’t talk some nights, or his eyes were wet, well, he was a teenager, and all I understood of teenagers was that they could be really emotional at times.’

Efnisien dug his fingers into the seat beneath him. He already didn’t like this story. He didn’t know where Arden was headed, but Efnisien was trapped in a bubble of _Can’t relate_ and _I don’t want to see where I intersect with this fucking world of yours._

‘And then he touched me,’ Arden said. Efnisien looked over to him. Arden had his eyes closed, he had a strange little wistful smile on his face. He looked like he was relating a nice dream, but the words weren’t nice at all. ‘The first time I wasn’t sure what was happening. I had no idea. But the second time he escalated. And then he escalated again. And then it was just rape. My brother was raping me. And I didn’t know what to do. Because he seemed kind of upset about it, and I wanted him to be happy, and raping me sure didn’t seem to be the ticket to either of us finding any kind of happiness.’

Efnisien couldn’t sort out any of his feelings. They’d clotted together. If he pulled at the reddish solidified clump of it, it’d burst like a balloon, a whole bunch of blood would fall through him in a sloppy, oozing mess.

A tiny part of him whispered maliciously, _‘Nice.’_ It mocked Arden’s story, it knew the best way to make Arden feel small and worthless. The word ‘nice’ echoed in Efnisien’s head, even as he hated himself more and more for thoughts that he knew he should be able to stop. He didn’t care what Dr Gary said. Normal people didn’t think _‘Nice’_ when they were told stories like this. And they didn’t think it maliciously, because they were always ready to hurt someone else just in case.

‘Anyway, I told my Dad,’ Arden said, opening his brown eyes and looking soberly at Efnisien. ‘But my Dad didn’t seem to care. He said stuff like that happens sometimes. So I told my Mum. And Mum flipped. She _flipped out._ And one thing led to another, and my brother went into Hillview. And that’s when we found out what’d really been going on.’

Efnisien’s eyebrows pulled together in confusion. Arden smiled that wistful smile again.

‘Dad had been raping him for years,’ Arden said, his smile broadening. But Arden’s eyes were _empty,_ his voice was conversational, but also bitter. ‘Dad had been raping him for so long, so long that Laurie didn’t think anyone would ever believe him, he didn’t know it wasn’t normal, he didn’t know it was something he didn’t deserve. And Dad _never_ touched the rest of us. Didn’t even show a single sign that he was like… Yeah.

‘By the time Laurie got to me, he was doing what he’d been taught, you know? From what I’ve learned, he was doing the nicest version of what he’d been taught. And it was awful. I _hated_ him. Like when he was in Hillview, I hated his guts. I used to send him letters, you know. I was going through therapy, and I’d write him these letters. I told him that I wished he was dead. All of that stuff.’

How was the story not fucking over yet?

Efnisien wondered if he could condense his whole life in this way. _Yeah, my aunt was weird and anyway I’m a malicious sack of shit and I abused a lot of people but then didn’t want my cousin to die so I helped him and got cut off from the big bucks and now I’m trying not to abuse people anymore and also I type pretty fast._

Not even a tenth as long as Arden’s story.

‘He’d write back to me,’ Arden said, ‘I never read his letters. Anyway, a few years passed. I was older. He was an adult. He went to like, therapy. He went to groups specifically for child sex offenders. He did everything he could do, and then he did more than what anyone expected him to do, trying to make sure he’d never hurt anyone like that ever again. My Dad? My Dad never did a thing. As far as I know he’s remarried and probably abusing kids again. I used to warn his girlfriends, but that didn’t go so well for me, they never believed me. Dad picks women who don’t believe people do that, and certainly not people like my _Dad_. Anyway… That’s not my point.’

Would he really stop if Efnisien lifted his index finger? Efnisien didn’t want to, he wanted to hear the rest of the story, but would Arden stop?

‘Laurie did everything right when he got out of Hillview. To be honest, I think what he did to me was this weird cry for help. I didn’t know that at the time. I felt betrayed at the time. But later, I realised he was stuck, he did the worst thing he could think of, but he did it to get everything out in the open. I think he knew I’d tell everyone, I was that kind of kid. I was his voice, because he didn’t have one.’

Arden closed his eyes again. He took a few careful breaths, one after the other, and Efnisien wondered if he was counting them. One inhale, two exhale, three inhale, four exhale.

Efnisien counted them for him. The wind shook the car. The beach beyond was a black hole, a vortex into sheer nothingness. It was like they were parked in front of the end of the world.

‘He tried to patch things up with me twice, once he got out of Hillview,’ Arden continued, ‘but always respected that I didn’t want anything to do with him. He even did it from a distance. Both times he sent letters. He never turned up, he was never in my presence again. After a while of my own therapy, I decided I just wanted to hear him out, decided to meet with him. I finally sent him a reply to one of his letters. Because those letters man, they were… They said a lot. I opened all the letters he sent me from Hillview. They were all like that. And I suddenly had to see him and I thought maybe a letter, because he’d been sending them too.

‘My letter arrived the day he killed himself. Like, unopened in his mailbox, because he topped himself in the morning and the mail came in the afternoon. That’s what Mum said. Like, the way she told me, she was like, ‘He’s dead, you know who I mean, and good riddance.’ And she was like, crying and telling me he wasn’t really her son anyway, even though like, tough luck Mum, but he was. He fucking _was_. And so…

‘So anyway, it turned out Laurie kept diaries. Mum didn’t want them. My Dad X-ed him out of his life pretty much as soon as Laurie started disclosing his experiences in Hillview. I got just about everything. I got his diaries. I got all the letters I’d sent to him in Hillview that he’d gone over so many times the paper was soft and crumply. All my hate-filled bullshit, and he’d read them like they were love letters. And I got like…years of diaries. Diaries he kept before Hillview. During Hillview. After. Describing everything he was doing to change who he was. His regret. How much he hated himself. How much he missed me.’

Arden lifted his hand and traced some shapes into the car seat, but he didn’t open his eyes. Efnisien thought in that moment that Arden looked so small, despite his stocky strength. The curve of his eyelashes was delicate, the frown at the edges of his mouth not harsh, but soft.

‘There was like a whole box of sparklers in Laurie’s garage. Like he had this whole box of sparklers he bought wholesale from somewhere. I knew as soon as I saw them, that he got them because of me, because he hoped – well, I don’t know. Did he think we would go back to the way we were? Or did he need something? Something we could do together when we caught up again? Something to remind him of what he’d had? Like, I don’t know. I don’t know. But anyway, I spent a lot of time thinking about all the things I’d say to him. I mean I said a lot of those things in the letter he never got to open. And if he’d just waited like, I don’t know, _four goddamn hours,_ he would have known I was willing to give it a try.’

When Arden opened his eyes, they were wet, but no tears fell.

‘Anyway, I think it’s pretty ridiculous of me to think the letter would’ve saved him, because he started feeling suicidal at the age of eight, which was when my Dad started in on him. So it wasn’t like… It wasn’t like feeling that way was new to him. You know. He attempted suicide three times when he was a teenager, but always by running in front of traffic on highways. Everyone always stopped. That was before he ever touched me. I think by the time he got to me… I think he thought there was nothing left in himself that mattered.’

Arden shrugged.

‘I cut myself off from the family. Mum was homophobic anyway, but I also couldn’t handle how much she hated Laurie. Funny, huh? Like he raped _me,_ Mum, he fucking betrayed _me,_ back up a second, will you? Her anger was so…useless to me. And in the end I hated her more than him. At least he _tried_ to improve himself. She’s just going to be stuck in angry-land for the rest of her life. So I cut myself off, changed my name, moved away, went to a different dojo. Made a life. And that’s the life I’m living now. I kind of like it. But yeah, I’d be lying if I said you didn’t remind me of him.’

Efnisien sat there feeling as cold as he had when he’d been standing on the beach. After a while he straightened, leaning towards the glovebox, curling over his belly. He had nothing useful to say. His brain was a constant roar, like the ocean on high speed, waves flipping over each other in hyper-speed in his head.

‘It’s not bad,’ Arden said gently. ‘You remind me of things I liked about him most, his best qualities. That he was trying. That he did shit other people _hated_ him for, but you know what, I don’t know how, he found something decent and held onto it and worked on that instead. He never once asked me to forgive him. He never pressured me into minimising any of it. He took it more seriously than I did, in some of his letters.’

Efnisien pressed his hand to the car door, fingers silently feeling for the lever.

‘I didn’t tell you to make you feel bad,’ Arden said again, pushing up like he was seeing something. ‘But because I think… you seem like someone who’s found something decent, and is trying to hold onto it. Even if no one else is helping you with that.’

Efnisien’s stomach hurt. He shouldn’t have eaten that fish.

He opened the car door, he swung his other hand blindly in Arden’s direction and lifted his index finger as he stumbled out. Arden was calling his name, but Efnisien half-ran blindly to the bin that Arden had jogged to before. It wasn’t that he was cold because of the beach, he was cold because of the fucking _nausea._

He hardly ever threw up. Even when he ate food he shouldn’t, it was usually just excruciating diarrhea and cramps and sometimes a weirdly sore throat the next morning. He’d had an iron stomach all his life. Even stuff that made Gwyn sick, if he ate it by accident or on purpose, it’d only be a few hours of misery writhing around on his bed, but he didn’t throw up. He wasn’t like Gwyn, he didn’t just puke _whenever._ He didn’t do that shit.

But there he was, bent over the bin, hurling his guts out in wave after wave of involuntarily spasms and wretched, cramping pain. And when he saw the seeds in the tomatoes slide out of his mouth, he thought of popping eyeballs and that made it all worse. He felt like he was going to hurl his whole fucking stomach to the bin in a wet, pathetic splat.

Eventually he was done. He staggered back away from the bin, bumping into Arden, who was standing behind him. Efnisien pushed away from him.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry. It was the food.’

‘Was it?’ Arden said, his voice shaking.

_Fucked if I know._

Efnisien felt like he was going to cry. He pressed the back of his hand to his eye briefly, then stared towards the sand dunes and the beach, its empty blackness, trying to understand what his brain was doing.

‘I can’t _think,’_ he said. He sounded so fucking whiny. It was Arden’s story. Arden was the one that got raped by his own fucking brother. Efnisien had never been through anything like that. ‘I can’t- It’s so-’

‘Hey,’ Arden said, his voice soothing. ‘Hey, can I touch you? Please?’

Efnisien nodded and had barely finished before fingers hooked into his jumper and pulled him closer. And then Arden was there, arms up around Efnisien’s shoulders, and Efnisien’s face was hidden in the scarf and he was cold and he felt sore and his gut was a fucking _rock._

‘It was your story,’ Efnisien heard himself say. ‘It’s yours. I shouldn’t be reacting like this.’

‘No, no, it’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine that you feel so awful. But like, it’s okay. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you like that. All at once. I just find it easier to do it that way.’

Arden’s arms were tight around him, his voice was close and low and urgent. Arden was warmer than Efnisien, could’ve been the warmest point on the whole street. And Efnisien stood there – the wind whipping his hair in every direction – thinking this was the most anyone had ever touched him like this in his whole life. His whole life.

Arden did it like it was easy. Arden who had like a million excuses to not find anything easy. Definitely not touching people. Not after a story like that.

‘I’m sorry,’ Efnisien said, his voice choked in his throat, voice muffled into the scarf. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry that happened to you.’

He thought of all the things he’d done to other people and tried to tell himself to feel that badly for _them,_ and he didn’t. And he hated himself, because he didn’t understand anything in his head at all.

‘It’s okay,’ Arden said. ‘It’s not your fault. You didn’t do it. And I’m okay now, Ef. I mean, you know, still a trauma victim. But I’m okay now, baby, it’s fine. I’m sorry for upsetting you.’

_‘No,’_ Efnisien said, because he didn’t want Arden to apologise to _him._ ‘I’m just- I’m… I have to- I think I have to go home now. I have to go home.’

‘Okay,’ Arden said. ‘Can you walk back to the car?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, lurching away from Arden, even though he didn’t want to. ‘Yeah I can…walk home or something.’

‘ _Efnisien,’_ Arden said, a strength and firmness snapping so naturally into his voice that Efnisien stopped walking and stared at him. ‘I’m going to drive you home. Should I call anyone for you?’

Efnisien shook his head dumbly.

‘I’m sorry I reacted this way,’ he said.

And then he walked back to the car, away from Arden’s voice, that sympathetic tone. It was Arden’s story. _Arden’s story._

He got back into the car and felt empty and stupid.

He still didn’t know why he was so upset.

Arden got into the driver’s seat and moved it until it was back into its previous position. He started the engine, looked over at Efnisien like he wanted to say something, then looked out over the steering wheel, through the windscreen.

Then he pulled out and he put his music on, and Efnisien was so blindly grateful for the fact that he wouldn’t have to _talk._ Neither of them could talk, and Efnisien could bury himself in the music and calm the fuck down. And he tried to do exactly that during the drive, staring out of the window and trying not to notice how many times Arden looked over at him, which was so many times that Efnisien stopped counting.

When Arden pulled up in front of Efnisien’s apartment block, Efnisien couldn’t bring himself to leave straight away. He went to unloop the scarf and give it back, but Arden shook his head.

‘Keep it for now,’ Arden said. ‘I have a bunch. Give it back when you have one of your own.’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said, feeling dull and spacey. ‘Arden. Why do you want me in your life, really? Why haven’t you told me to fuck off from the bookstore yet? There are other bookstores. I just keep getting this feeling that maybe you want to make yourself feel better about Laurie. And that’s not _bad,_ I guess, because it means you’re getting something out of it. So I mean, maybe I should shut the fuck up and just, just be someone who exists to let you feel better about Laurie, maybe.’

_And I don’t have to exist as a real person to you, because fuck knows I’m not a real person anyway, half the time. I don’t care what Dr Gary says._

‘That’s the thing, Ef, I do feel okay about Laurie,’ Arden said. ‘That story covers a couple of decades of emotional growth, and the person I am now is not the person I was when he hurt me, or when he was in Hillview, or when he killed himself, or even five years after that. Like I’m not _okay_ about it, it still upsets me. But I know you’re not him. Your personalities are really different.’

‘So then…why?’ Efnisien said desperately. ‘Like, put me out of my misery. Please. Why?’

‘I like you,’ Arden said.

‘ _Why?’_

Arden’s hands fidgeted in his lap, his fingers tapped the steering wheel a few times. ‘What response do you think I can give that you’re going to believe? It sounds like the only one you’re entertaining, is the one that erases you from the equation entirely. I like you, Ef. That’s it. That’s all. It’s not a puzzle you have to figure out. It just is.’

‘Like you’re even gonna want to hang out with me again after tonight.’

‘Why not?’ Arden said, like he really didn’t understand. ‘You expressed empathy. You tried to have a good time. Next time we’ll figure out something that might work better for you. Do you want to hang out with _me_ again?’

_I mean, you’re my only friend, so…_

But Efnisien knew even if that wasn’t true, he’d want to hang out with Arden again. He couldn’t explain it. He was pretty sure that most functional people didn’t deliver their whole entire traumatising story like that, the first time they hung out with someone, but he found most functional people really fucking boring.

‘Do you have any more stories like that lying around?’ Efnisien asked.

‘Nope,’ Arden said, popping the ‘P.’ ‘I mean I have stories. But nothing like that. That’s my big thing.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, exhaling heavily. ‘Fuck. It really is though. Big.’

‘Right?’ Arden said, smiling weakly.

‘And you just told me all that, like, all at once. With me being the kind of person I am.’

‘You’re not the kind of person you think you are,’ Arden said. ‘Anyway, you didn’t answer me. Do you want to catch up again? Did I scare you off?’

‘Nah,’ Efnisien said after a while. ‘Your judo scares me way more than that story does.’

Arden blinked at him, then his expression changed, turned grave. ‘My judo does?’

Efnisien shrugged.

‘Efnisien,’ he said. ‘I will _never_ use that against you. I only use it in self-defence, or with other trained individuals. You’re only going to see it if you ever try to seriously hurt me, and like you said, you haven’t hurt anyone in three years and I _believe_ that you haven’t. No matter what happens, or how angry I get, I will never use that as a weapon against you. Okay?’

Efnisien nodded. He wanted to scoff like it wasn’t important, but he hadn’t realised how much he needed those words until Arden said them. He didn’t like to think about physical violence. Didn’t like to think about Crielle’s husband, or what it was like having to pretend it was hilarious watching Gwyn get beat down when he was pretty sure Gwyn was going to be killed a few times. Like, he loved Crielle, but he also loved Gwyn, which was a catch-fucking-22 in that household.

‘I think you have big things too, Ef,’ Arden said quietly.

‘Nah,’ Efnisien said, opening the car door. ‘So, um. Message me? Sometime? If you want? Or I’ll see you in the bookstore in a few days or something. So… Fuck. Shit.’

He closed the car door, embarrassed by his own flailing. He walked away, hands in his pockets. God, he was useless. If he didn’t use the charm he had for hunting, he was literally nothing but a randomly firing vocabulary that largely consisted of swearing.

‘Hey! Ef!’

Efnisien turned. Arden had wound down the window and was grinning at him, bright and unfairly cheerful after everything he’d shared. Arden waved vigorously, and Efnisien couldn’t help himself, caught up in the exchange. He waved back helplessly. Arden did that stupid wink, then pulled out of the parallel bay and drove off into the night, leaving Efnisien standing there, feeling like it was late as fuck with how exhausted he was. It wasn’t even seven yet.

God, he was going to _sleep_ tonight. He was going to sleep for consecutive weeks. He didn’t even try to untangle the clumpy massive knot of crap in his head, in his gut. He went up to his apartment and dropped face first onto his bed, and fell asleep like that, one hand curled up into the corner of his pillow, still wearing Arden’s scarf, snuggling his face down into it because it was warm.


	13. Landmark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The technique that Dr Gary uses in his session with Efnisien is known as ‘focusing’ and is a part of felt sense psychotherapy. Brief ableist slur. 
> 
> Bear with me, the road’s about to get weird.

Efnisien stared at the word _Assessment_ on Dr Gary’s tablet and grimaced.

‘Shit,’ he said.

‘Indeed,’ Dr Gary said. ‘It’s time to revisit the fun and entertaining world of psychological reassessment. It shouldn’t take the whole session, but I do want to run you through more than one test.’

‘What if I had things I wanted to talk about?’ Efnisien said.

Dr Gary looked at him, then tilted his head, thinking it over. ‘Have you had a worse week than normal?’

‘What? Uh…’ Efnisien sat there, feeling stunned. Aside from his freak-out over Arden’s story, and then sleeping a ton, not really. In fact, there’d been less tallies on the whiteboard than usual. ‘No.’

He just wanted to talk about all the _stuff_ that had been happening. That morning Efnisien’s phone pinged. He’d snatched it up, thinking it was Arden, but Gwyn was messaging to double check they were okay to catch up. Efnisien messaged back to say it was fine, then realised he’d sort of…not forgotten exactly. He would never forget Gwyn’s visits.

But he hadn’t been as obsessed with it as normal.

‘It’s been _weird_ though,’ he added.

‘Ah,’ Dr Gary said, holding up his tablet. ‘I’d like to do the assessments to quantify some of that ‘weirdness.’ We can put it off, but I’d rather not. I’ve already delayed your reassessment and it would be irresponsible of me to keep putting it off. The sooner we get this over and done with, the sooner we can talk.’

‘You gonna tell me how fucked up I am after the tests?’ Efnisien said.

‘No,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I’m going to tell you if your diagnoses have changed or shifted, or if I think that the assessments are likely to indicate change. And then I’m going to see if that means it’s time to advance you into some different therapeutic management techniques.’

‘Oh, so like graduating to new disorders? You know, none of the psychology books I’ve read have talked about like, the undergrad and postgrads of being fucked up.’

‘That’s true,’ Dr Gary said, slightly distracted as he tapped away on his tablet. ‘Most people are generally satisfied with one disorder.’

‘So this is the session where you finally admit you were wrong, and I never had Pure O, right?’

‘No,’ Dr Gary said. ‘And now to the matter at hand. The assessments are all multiple choice. Please don’t think too hard about your answers, and answer as quickly as reasonably possible. Your first answer is likely to be the most accurate, unless you misunderstood the question.’

Efnisien slouched down in his chair, and then for good measure continued to slide forwards until his hips were off the edge of the cushion and he had to brace his calves and thighs to stop from sliding onto the floor entirely.

‘I hate this,’ Efnisien muttered.

Dr Gary only smiled professionally at him, and Efnisien rolled his eyes and nodded to indicate that he was ready to answer questions as he wiggled back onto the chair.

So. Many. Fucking. Questions.

As Efnisien answered them, he remembered the way he’d answered them the first time around back in Hillview, even drugged up on injected Risperidone and Escitalopram, the latter of which stayed his drug of choice. He could tell he was answering differently on a lot of the questions this time around. No, he didn’t enjoy thoughts of hurting animals. No, he didn’t enjoy thoughts of hurting people. Yes, he was disturbed by the content of his intrusive thoughts. No, not just ‘rarely,’ but actually _all the fucking time._

‘Jesus,’ Efnisien said weakly after one of the questions.

‘Mm?’ Dr Gary said, looking eager to get to the next question. Efnisien would be annoyed, except he could tell that Dr Gary was excited by the changes.

‘It’s all different,’ Efnisien said. ‘Even I can tell it’s different.’

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I think we can move the ‘atypical presentation’ away from your primarily obsessional obsessive-compulsive disorder, at the least. Shall we continue?’

Efnisien nodded.

He could tell when they transitioned to assessments on post-trauma and grimaced at all of his answers. He didn’t see the point in lying, but fuck, he wanted to. He wanted to not have to see what was right in front of him. He could spend the rest of his life telling Dr Gary he was wrong, but Efnisien could work out the metrics himself.

As soon as Dr Gary was finished – twenty minutes remaining in the session – Dr Gary put the tablet down and threaded his fingers together, leaning back in that way that meant he felt particularly satisfied.

‘You officially have post-traumatic stress disorder,’ Dr Gary said. ‘What remains to be seen is how severe it is, but that will come out in the numbers. I think there might be something around somatisation as well, so we’ll investigate that further. I feel some congratulations are in order, your-’

‘Congratulations I have PTS-fucking-D?’ Efnisien scoffed. ‘Which I _don’t_ have, by the way.’

Maybe he’d keep doing that purely to piss Dr Gary off. For giving him another goddamn disorder.

‘Congratulations,’ Dr Gary said, ‘your ability to self-regulate and cooperate with me in these sessions has seen concrete results in the severity and presentation of your intrusive thoughts.’ Dr Gary stared at him levelly. ‘You still have active Pure O, you may always have it to a degree, but many of your responses indicate a significant and successful level of self-management. Even when it doesn’t feel like you’re making progress, Efnisien, I’d like for you to take stock and recognise that you’ve achieved results through your hard work.’

Efnisien sat straighter in his chair and stared over at the plant and thought it’d be hilarious if he smashed the pot plant over Dr Gary’s head to prove a point. The blood and dirt would mingle together, and Dr Gary would probably be unconscious, because it was a heavy ceramic pot. Efnisien might succeed in crushing Dr Gary’s skull actually, before he ever made his point.

He winced, rubbed at his face.

‘Gwyn has PTSD,’ Efnisien said. ‘I haven’t been through anything. I _gave_ him PTSD. Or at least, I helped.’

‘You have been through a great deal, and not only in that household,’ Dr Gary said in that infuriating steady tone. ‘Hillview is explicitly out of bounds as a subject that I can bring up, until you open the door to it, but just because you refuse to open that door, doesn’t mean I am unaware of what you experienced there.’

‘You don’t know _dick_ about what happened to me there,’ Efnisien grated out of his suddenly tight throat.

‘Of course,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I apologise. I don’t. Because you refuse to tell me. Now, shall we focus on what you wanted to tell me before? We don’t have time unfortunately for a proper session. If there was one thing you could talk to me about before you leave today, what would it be?’

Efnisien was still glaring at Dr Gary, because the dude was _so_ not above constant low blows about Hillview, like he was trying to goad Efnisien into getting angry enough that he’d start talking about it. Whatever. He knew that game and it wasn’t going to work.

Then he chewed the inside of his cheek and thought about one thing to talk about. One thing. Truthfully, there’d been one thing really bugging him, and it hadn’t let him go. He’d spent the days after seeing Arden absolutely exhausted. He hadn’t even gone in to get a book, messaging to say he was tired and that he’d be there the week after. Arden had texted and asked if he was okay, and Efnisien said he was sleeping a lot. Which was the truth.

It was like his brain had taken everything about Arden’s story and not known how to process it. He’d woken up groggy, the taste of vomit in his mouth – enough to make him gag again – and feeling like he was choking. He’d yanked the scarf off and stumbled to the bathroom to brush his teeth, then went straight back to bed and slept. He instinctively got up at the right time to do his surveillance watch for the data company, then went back to bed until hunger pangs got him up again.

It’d been a while since he’d been through something like that. He remembered sometimes going through weird sleeping episodes back home. Crielle had left him to it, and after two to four days of sleeping, everything went back to normal.

But it was always a period of time where he was locked out of his brain, his own thoughts, and then when he came back to himself, things were sometimes a bit different.

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said. ‘Here’s something. Cognitive dissonance, yeah? Arden told me basically the story of why he doesn’t hate me for the things I’ve done, and it’s a horrible fucking story. It involves stuff like what I’ve done to other people. Except he had it happen to him. I got upset. Like, for him. So, empathy. Right?’

Dr Gary nodded, indicating that he wanted Efnisien to continue.

‘But when I think about everything I’ve done to people in the past, including Gwyn, I just feel fucking _nothing._ I don’t get upset for them. I don’t feel anything. It’s like a vacuum is permanently on in that part of my brain, sucking up that shit. So is that me being a dickhead by trying to protect myself from the actual awfulness of what I’ve done? Is it a copout? Cowardice?’

Dr Gary’s eyebrows lifted and he pressed his lips together. He unthreaded his fingers and placed one of his arms on the armrest, and he tilted his head again, looking off into the distance and thinking it over.

That was a nice thing for him to do, given the answer was obviously _Yes, Efnisien, you’re a fucking coward._

‘I’d like to try a technique quickly,’ Dr Gary said. ‘If we run ten minutes over today it’s fine. It’s one of the techniques I’ve been wanting to introduce to you, but you might not like it.’

‘Great,’ Efnisien said.

Dr Gary smiled. Then he took a deep, slow breath. ‘You’ve described yourself as feeling nothing in response to the actions you’ve taken to hurt others in the past. Are there any other words you think of that capture or describe that feeling of nothingness?’

‘Um,’ Efnisien said.

‘There’s no right or wrong answers. However you answer is how you feel, and therefore, the best response. I’m not trying to push you to a premeditated place, and I’d like you not to cater your response to what you think I want to hear.’

‘Well, obviously now I’ve _got_ to do that,’ Efnisien said drily. He looked down, trying to think. ‘Ah, I guess…I feel apathetic about the things I’ve done. Or even idle, like an idling engine or some shit. Like I can look at all those memories no problems, and I know I did it, and I know it was bad. I’ve known that since before I came to Hillview, it was kind of the point. Like I did it _because_ it was bad. And it’s not like, a turn on anymore, it’s almost like I’m too lazy to have a response at all.’

‘All right, so lazy, idle – possibly like an engine, apathetic, nothingness. Is that right?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said.

‘Now, bear with me,’ Dr Gary said, smiling in apology. ‘If you had to find that feeling somewhere in your body, where would that feeling be? It could be your chest, your little finger, your head, anywhere.’

Efnisien stared at him, baffled. Dr Gary nodded towards him in encouragement.

‘Fuck me,’ Efnisien said, exhaling heavily. ‘What does that even _mean?’_

‘There’s no right or wrong answer, I’d just like you to focus on those words, that feeling of being lazy and idle on this matter, or apathetic, or feeling nothingness, and see if you can find-’

‘Here,’ Efnisien said abruptly, pushing the heel of his hand to his chest. While Dr Gary talked, he’d felt something strange inside of his ribs. Like a bigness, a tightness. ‘It doesn’t actually _feel_ lazy. So maybe I…didn’t…find it?’

‘It’s fine if it doesn’t feel exactly like what you’re looking for,’ Dr Gary said. ‘That’s what responded when you looked, and you told me. You’re doing very well so far. Not knowing the exact answer is actually what being on the right track looks like, believe it or not.’

‘So I’m meant to feel really fucking confused?’

Dr Gary smiled an affirmation, and Efnisien felt vaguely alarmed. He didn’t like talking about things this way. His body was unpredictable as fuck. It just _did_ things without him wanting it to.

‘I don’t know if I like this,’ Efnisien said.

‘Do you feel too close to it?’ Dr Gary said immediately. ‘What if you could take that feeling or shape in your chest and place it outside of yourself? Would it still be too close if it was in the same room? Say, here on the floor between us?’

Efnisien nodded, even though he had no idea how he fucking _knew_ that. He also knew it would be too big to fit between them. Which was insane, if it was in his chest, it wasn’t too big. So…

‘That’s fine,’ Dr Gary said. ‘What if you imagined it on the street, by the door to the clinic? Is that a safe enough distance?’

‘Uh… Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘Maybe um, the middle of the road. Look, this is really weird. What are you doing?’

‘We’re bypassing your consciousness and addressing the body directly, through the unconscious,’ Dr Gary said easily. ‘It’s normal to experience some anxiety or alarm, because your conscious mind won’t be used to giving up some control to your unconscious mind in this fashion. But you’re in my office, you’re safe, we can stop at any time, and this isn’t designed to hurt you. Shall we continue?’

Efnisien nodded reluctantly. Then shrugged. He was curious in spite of himself. He wanted to at least try the technique if Dr Gary thought it might be good for him. It wasn’t like talking about the details of his intrusive thoughts was much better.

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Excellent. So, can you place the shape that contains those feelings, those lazy, apathetic, nothingness feelings onto the street? In the middle of the road? Can you imagine yourself putting it there?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. It was surprisingly easy to imagine. And then as soon as he did it, he stopped feeling that bigness and tightness in his own chest. He blinked. Despite not being asked, he tried to see what kind of shape it had, but it was amorphous.

‘Now that you can look at it more safely, can you describe its shape?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘It’s…um, it doesn’t really have a shape.’

‘Is it big? Or small? The size of a house? Or a car? Or a person?’

‘A car,’ Efnisien said immediately. As soon as Dr Gary said it, Efnisien realised that was why it was too big to fit on the floor between them.

‘Very good. Does it have a colour?’

Efnisien felt like he was actually looking at it. This was so _fucking weird._ Like his brain gave birth to a bizarre abstract sculpture fuzzing away on the street. ‘I don’t… uh… Like, black or grey. Or like nothing. I don’t know.’

‘So, this feeling is about the size of a car, it’s maybe black or grey. Can you connect it with a sensation? A physical sensation?’

‘It’s…’ Efnisien made a face. ‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s okay, you’re doing great. It’s normal not to know, that gives us information too.’

‘Doesn’t feel like I’m giving you fucking _anything.’_

‘I know,’ Dr Gary said. ‘But you are. We have a lot of information already.’

‘About a _shape.’_

Dr Gary smiled, amused. ‘Yes. Now, can you tell me anything about how this idle, lazy, apathetic shape feels overall? How does it seem in relation to you? Does it notice you? Or have a reaction to you?’

Efnisien nodded immediately. Then he pressed his palm into the armrest. ‘I dunno. This is stupid.’

‘That’s okay, is the shape telling you that this is stupid?’

‘ _No,’_ Efnisien said. _‘I_ think this is stupid.’

‘Okay, well, I can see that a part of you thinks this is stupid. I’m grateful that part of you decided to share that with me. Now, how does the shape seem in relation to you?’

Efnisien ground his teeth together and had to resist squirming on the seat. He wanted to say it was stupid again, but he knew the response would be the same. He understood from Dr Gary’s response that now wasn’t time for the part of him that thought this was stupid to speak, it was time for the shape, or some shit. ‘I dunno. Like… Anxious. Or, like, it wants to protect me but… but…’

_Where the fuck is this coming from?_

The idea that there was something in him that wanted to protect him was so wrong. So fucking wrong.

Efnisien shook his head in frustration. And Dr Gary nodded and didn’t look like any of this was unusual or bizarre. But Dr Gary fucking looked like that when Efnisien had a pen to his throat years ago. Efnisien was pretty sure when the end of the world came, Dr Gary would look up at the meteor and then go inside and very calmly finish a bottle of whiskey or something.

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said. ‘So this shape feels possibly anxious, or like it wants to help you but… But it can’t?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘Not that it _can’t_.’

Efnisien sat there thinking it over and couldn’t stop his frustration from bursting out. ‘But like, this just means the feeling is trying to protect me from like, really facing what I did to other people, right? How shit is that? Also, like, _whatever._ Shouldn’t I be feeling miserable for what I did to people for the rest of my life? That’s the whole point of this, isn’t it?’

‘Is that what you think the point of your therapy is?’

‘Yes?’ Efnisien said, annoyed.

Dr Gary frowned at him. ‘You don’t think it’s about increasing the quality of your life, or enriching your life, or increasing your avenues of support? You think it’s about feeling miserable for the rest of your life?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘And learning how to handle that. Like, learning how to…handle it properly. So that I don’t run away from it.’

‘Do you think you do run away from it?’

‘I don’t _feel_ anything about the people I fucking hurt, about the animals I killed!’

Efnisien gulped and had to look away, because he _definitely_ felt like shit about the animals he’d killed. Dr Gary was silent for a long time, and Efnisien knew, he _knew_ Dr Gary was dying to point it out.

‘That’s a very absolute statement,’ Dr Gary said finally. ‘How would you revise it, to make it more accurate?’

‘I’m a fucking _coward,’_ Efnisien spat out.

‘It sounds like you’re here to try and force yourself to feel miserable about what you’ve done to other people. I understand why that might be a goal of yours. What’s the shape on the street doing?’

‘Nothing, because it’s _stupid.’_

Efnisien thought he might have regressed a bit. He was so annoyed with himself. He felt agitated.

‘Anxious,’ he said. ‘It’s anxious. It’s not _doing_ anything because it’s just a fucking _shape._ ’

 _Leave it alone,_ he found himself thinking. And then he was shocked at his own thoughts. What the hell?

‘Okay, thank you,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I appreciate that this is challenging. I think that’s a good place to stop. I’d like to thank you and that part of you, the shape, for being willing to engage in this. I’d like you to consider thanking that part of you for being willing to communicate with us today. Can you do that for me? You don’t have to do it out loud.’

Efnisien mentally sent an extremely resentful _‘thanks, asshole’_ to the shape out in the street, then felt a bizarre kind of inner acknowledgement, a responding pang in his chest. In that moment, he felt attached to it, like it was his, and not an alien, and not an enemy, and not completely fabricated or made up, and not something to be terrified of, but…his.

He also felt calmer. He was glad the exercise was over. That was harder than he thought it’d be, given he was basically offering a lot of non-tangible information over something that felt really odd.

‘I said thank you,’ Efnisien said grudgingly.

‘Good,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Thanks for being so receptive to trying the technique.’

‘Feels like we did nothing.’

‘It can feel that way,’ Dr Gary said. ‘And I apologise that we couldn’t talk about everything you wanted to, today. But the reassessment will be invaluable for the both of us. Also, as to our next appointment, Dr Ferguson has agreed to meet with you here, with me. Or, alternatively, we can push that appointment back.’

Efnisien closed his eyes. God, he did not want to have that appointment. He understood why Dr Gary wanted him to have it, thought that even just for Dr Gary’s sake, it might be worth having. But it was all too hard. ‘I just want our easier sessions back.’

‘They were never easy, Efnisien,’ Dr Gary said. ‘But I acknowledge that this is beyond a normal level of challenge for you. You can send Dr Ferguson out at any time, or you can ask me to send him out. He is fully prepared for these outcomes and does not expect you to like him or even be friendly towards him. You and I will also be spending the last ten to twenty minutes of the session together, to debrief’

Efnisien hunched into himself and grimaced.

‘Finally,’ Dr Gary said, ‘I’d like to point out something of a milestone. Today was the first session in three years where I haven’t had to ask you for a number, to draw your attention back to the session.’

Efnisien stilled, then looked at Dr Gary in surprise.

‘I still had intrusive thoughts though,’ he said quickly.

‘Yes, I’m sure you did. I’m sure you will continue to. Our goal was never elimination, but self-regulation. And that’s not a linear or easy process. I simply wanted to point out the milestone. It’s also not a failure if I need to ask you for a number the next time I see you. Nor is it a failure if you have periods where the intrusive thoughts are much harder to manage. But milestones still deserve to be acknowledged when they happen.’

‘Lame,’ Efnisien said.

‘Do you want to go ahead with the session with Ferguson and myself next week?’

Efnisien groaned and clawed a little at the armrest. ‘ _Fine.’_

‘He’s not going to hurt you,’ Dr Gary said firmly. ‘He can’t. I will be there the entire time. And Efnisien, this would be challenging to a client who didn’t have your history. It’s hard to trust consultants and newcomers. As someone who consults on other cases, sometimes with the clients in the room, I appreciate how difficult this is. Even if this had been your idea, it would be normal to be nervous and apprehensive. There will be no consequences or disapproval if you decide it’s not a good fit and you want to stop, do you understand?’

‘I said _fine,’_ Efnisien said. ‘You don’t need to keep talking about it.’

Dr Gary took a breath, but he didn’t look annoyed, he looked – if anything – a little bit nervous.

‘What?’ Efnisien said sharply. ‘You think I’m gonna hurt him or something?’

‘No,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Not at all. I don’t want to put you in situations that might cause you undue distress, and this is an unusual situation. I would rather we had made more progress in certain areas of your recovery before we took this step, but-’

‘But I refuse to talk about stuff,’ Efnisien said heavily.

‘Yes. However, that’s not pressure on you to talk about it,’ Dr Gary said, meeting his gaze and lifting his eyebrows.

‘Sure, sure,’ Efnisien said, standing and stretching his arms out. ‘Like you aren’t _dying_ for me to talk about that shit. You shrinks are all the same.’

Dr Gary only smiled and didn’t say a word.

‘I’m onto you,’ Efnisien said as he reached the door. ‘Dr _Konowalous.’_

Dr Gary visibly winced. ‘Dr Gary, please.’

‘Whatever,’ Efnisien said. ‘Don’t expect me to be nice next week.’

‘Oh, I don’t,’ Dr Gary said, as Efnisien grinned at him, opened the door and swung out of it, closing it behind him.

It was only halfway back to his place that he realised he didn’t feel like absolute shit. Something about the session, he was sure, because he’d been buzzing with stress and agitation before he’d arrived. He reached around for the shape inside of him and it was still there, but the anxiety and the weirdness of it felt a bit more distant, like he could look at it without being right inside of it. Putting it out in the road like that had given him a different perspective, and whatever the shape was doing, it wasn’t bugging him the same way it did before.

‘Well, shit,’ he muttered to himself. Maybe the technique wasn’t so useless after all. He shoved his hands into his pockets and walked home, feeling awake instead of sleepy, noticing every tree and its green canopy that he passed.


	14. Patterns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's amazing how people who start out good for us, can turn into...not that. Also Gwyn's in this chapter.
> 
> Thanks for everyone's responses, they're just so inspiring re: writing more of this story, and I'm so grateful.

Efnisien took the book Gwyn handed to him. It was black and grey and it was about astrophysics. Efnisien flicked through it and saw that it was dense, there were even sections filled with formulae and he felt a spike of excitement. This wasn’t pop science or armchair science, it was an actual textbook, probably university level. He knew from visiting the Cosy Book Corner that it would’ve been expensive.

‘Where’d you find it?’ Efnisien said, walking over to the desk and sitting down, staring at the tiny font. This’d keep him going for a few days.

‘Gulvi’s university was having a book sale, and I decided to take a look.’

Efnisien nodded. He forced himself to close the book as Gwyn looked around. Efnisien felt nervous having him there. He wanted to say he’d been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, but then Gwyn would ask him why, and Efnisien didn’t want to talk about it. He wanted to say they had something else in common, aside from being related, and both of them having blond hair and blue eyes.

‘You’ve gotten some more books,’ Gwyn said.

‘Yep,’ Efnisien said. ‘I, um. I made a friend. At the bookstore. We hung out.’

_See? See, I can do it. I can do things. I don’t just have to stab animals and people._

Gwyn’s expression stilled and he looked past Efnisien for a long moment. Finally, he looked at Efnisien and his expression was grim.

‘Don’t hurt them.’

It was like the feeling of running down stairs, but misplacing his foot and having to take two at a time by accident, landing so hard his entire leg jarred. For a minute, Efnisien couldn’t think. When he could, he stared at the table and thought Gwyn had meant it as an insult. And then he realised that’s just what Gwyn thought. It wasn’t an insult, it was the most natural thing Gwyn had to say in response to Efnisien meeting someone.

_Don’t hurt them._

‘Right,’ Efnisien said, laughing to himself. ‘Yeah.’

‘I mean it, Efnisien,’ Gwyn said. ‘I’m glad you’ve made a friend. Make sure you don’t lose the progress you’ve made.’

Even Dr Gary never talked to him that way.

_You’re not my fucking therapist,_ Efnisien thought. And Gwyn wasn’t his jailor, or his keeper, and Efnisien sat there and felt numb. He traced his finger along the spine of the astrophysics book and felt a clamour of noise in his head.

He remembered once, putting broken glass in Gwyn’s shoes. At the time, he thought he was being particularly clever. He didn’t know why he had such a thing for hurting Gwyn’s feet, given he didn’t care about them the rest of the time. It was probably because he liked that Gwyn couldn’t walk for a little while afterwards. Gwyn had to lay in bed, and Efnisien could visit him and Gwyn couldn’t leave.

He remembered how it felt to scatter the broken glass, and he cut himself twice because he was a fucking idiot about it, and the third time he cut himself because it was so fascinating to him that the glass wouldn’t seem harmful at all until he found the right angle. He remembered sucking on his cut fingers and hoping he’d swallow slivers of glass, and he imagined them moving through his body, invisibly cutting through him until he vomited blood everywhere. It’d spray over everyone. Maybe even Crielle. And she’d stare at him in horror and he’d smile and blood would be all over his teeth.

Gwyn realised the broken glass was there and tipped it out. Efnisien retaliated that night by punching Gwyn in the gut while he slept. And then Gwyn – angry and old enough to fight back – wrestled Efnisien to the ground and pinned him, while Efnisien laughed and laughed.

‘Come on, it was clever, admit it,’ he’d said back then, giggling while his arm felt like it was about to be torn out of its socket. ‘Lludd would never be that smart.’

And Gwyn kept a knee in his back and kept that pressure up on his arm and then a minute later laughed himself. Efnisien remembered wanting to hurt him so badly. So badly. Sometimes he wanted to grab Gwyn’s face and smash his own face into it, until their heads mashed together, an explosion of skull and flesh and brain.

‘Efnisien?’ Gwyn said.

_Maybe a seven,_ Efnisien thought, jerking into the room, leaning back in his chair.

‘I’m not going to hurt him,’ Efnisien said. But that wasn’t true, he didn’t know the future. ‘I don’t want to hurt him,’ he corrected.

_He’s been hurt enough._

‘Yes, well…’ Gwyn said. ‘Okay.’

Gwyn didn’t believe him. Efnisien sat there and savagely thought that he hadn’t hurt any fucking living thing for three years. He didn’t even fucking hurt spiders. He didn’t even hurt spiders! He put them outside. Because that was the thing, he couldn’t make exceptions for some living things and not others, not anymore. For a while he didn’t even know if he could eat meat and still be safe. In the end he still ate it. But spiders got a pass.

When Gwyn started talking about his life, Efnisien realised he didn’t give a shit. He looked up at Gwyn like he was listening, and he studied him. Gwyn looked healthier than he used to, he’d filled out more, he was still muscular but it wasn’t intense like it used to be. His hair was thicker and healthier, it had product in it now so it wasn’t fuzzy like Efnisien’s was. His clothing looked good. Not ‘rich people good’ but like Gwyn had picked it out himself and was happy with it.

It took all of his willpower not to bait Gwyn about Augus. It took all of his energy not to just say that Gwyn had better not bring Augus with him, because Efnisien would rape him with a kitchen knife.

He hated that he imagined himself doing it, hated that he could see it so clearly, he hated that it gave him a visceral satisfaction to think about while he listened to Gwyn.

He hated that he knew he’d never do it. Even Crielle was beginning to learn that towards the end. She was so disappointed in him.

‘You think Crielle’s out there killing people?’ Efnisien said, cutting off Gwyn halfway through talking about some bullshit boring story about the store where he worked.

‘I don’t know,’ Gwyn said. ‘Penny probably is. Crielle’s… I don’t know. I don’t think about it.’

‘Really? Your life’s so perfect that you never think about it?’ Efnisien said, tilting his head the way Dr Gary tilted his head. He could tell it was aggravating from the way Gwyn’s jaw tensed.

Everyone talked about how they all got Crielle’s blue eyes and blonde hair – even if Gwyn’s was weirdly pale – but the fact was, Gwyn looked like Lludd in a lot of ways too. He was bulky and tall like Lludd. He was thick across the shoulders and had a certain foreboding glower to his face, like Lludd. His jaw jumped _exactly_ the way Lludd’s did sometimes, when he glared at Efnisien.

Efnisien’s heart beat faster, faster, and he thought that sometimes being beaten to death by Gwyn didn’t seem like the worst way to go.

‘I don’t think it’s constructive to think about,’ Gwyn said.

‘Your psychologist funnel that one into your throat?’ Efnisien said, drawling the words. ‘Or did they fist it into you for fun? Sounds like you don’t have any thoughts of your own anymore. Nice. They’re all the same, aren’t they? Shrinks.’

That muscle was jumping in Gwyn’s jaw. Once, twice, again. He was clenching his teeth over and over again.

_What are you trying to avoid doing, Gwynnifer?_

He hated the way he was thinking, the way he was talking to Gwyn. He didn’t talk to anyone this way anymore, and then Gwyn was there and suddenly it seemed like the right thing to do. Gwyn thought he was going to hurt people anyway, right?

He might as well.

‘Do you think it’s _constructive_ to visit me?’ Efnisien said. ‘Do you think about the fact that maybe, just maybe, you’re the only thing standing in the way of me being semi-functional, murdering someone in cold blood?’

‘I do think about that,’ Gwyn said.

_I’ve never fucking murdered anyone, dipshit._

Efnisien forced himself to look at the book on astrophysics.

Gwyn wasn’t _wrong_ to think that way. After all, Efnisien had tortured him, had enjoyed torturing him. Maybe everyone else was wrong. Maybe Arden and Dr Gary were wrong. Efnisien sat there and tried to figure out why that felt so shitty to think about, when only a few months ago it’d felt inevitable and right.

Gwyn really thought Efnisien would murder someone. Efnisien stared at the book and the author’s last name. Saverimutto.

_Sri Lankan,_ Efnisien thought. They always had the best names.

‘What if I told you I’d done it before?’ Efnisien said, leaning back in his chair and smiling up at Gwyn. ‘What if I told you I’d done it before, and that Crielle – sweet woman that she was, to _me_ anyway – had dealt with everything and that’s why you never heard about it?’

Gwyn stared at him for long enough that Efnisien _knew_ he was trying to decide if it was real or not. Which meant he thought it could be. Efnisien couldn’t decide if he’d played that much of a good game when he was growing up, or if it meant he was a murderer. Even if Dr Gary said he wasn’t. If Efnisien thought about it all the time, maybe that meant he was. If people like Gwyn thought he was one by default, maybe it meant he was.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Gwyn said finally.

‘Nothing,’ Efnisien said. ‘It’s fine. Whatever. I don’t want to hurt him.’

‘So then don’t.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, smiling, the expression brittle. ‘That’s the golden ticket, right? Good thing I have you to make sure I won’t do shit like that anymore.’

It used to be something he said to twist the knife into Gwyn, but now it felt like he was twisting the knife into himself.

Gwyn stared at him, and Efnisien wanted to hurt him so badly in that moment that his hands clenched into fists. He wanted to stab his scissors up into Gwyn’s balls and watch him writhing on the floor and screaming in agony. Anything would be better than the way Gwyn looked at him in judgement. Better than sitting there knowing he’d never deserve anything good anyway.

It didn’t matter what Dr Gary said and it didn’t matter how well the last session had gone. Efnisien was a coward, he couldn’t face up to the truth, and he hurt Gwyn instead of dealing with it. He was meant to feel like shit. That was the only path ahead of him.

God, at least Gwyn was good at making him feel the way he was supposed to feel, that was something.

‘Um,’ Efnisien said, clearing his throat, feeling shaky. ‘Thanks for the book. I’m, uh. I appreciate it.’

‘I hope you like it.’

‘I will,’ Efnisien said. Because he was a dumb fuck that liked nonfiction books on just about anything, and he didn’t have any direction in his life, and it didn’t matter what he read. It would never matter. As long as it didn’t have a red spine, it would never fucking matter. It was just jargon in his brain until he was a rotting carcass.

Maybe, instead of hurting Gwyn, he could stab himself. He took a slow breath and thought it over, and decided he couldn’t be fucking assed doing that because it’d make such a fucking _mess_.

Gwyn turned like he was going to walk towards the door, then hesitated. He turned back.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Why’re you apologising to _me,_ for fuck’s sake?’ Efnisien snarled, a wave of fractious anger slamming into him. ‘You think, out of the two of us,’ he gestured between them both with his fingers, ‘that’s what you’re supposed to be doing? Apologising to _me?_ Is that it?’

‘No,’ Gwyn said. ‘I’m not- I just meant that-’

‘You’re still so fucked up over what I did to you that you’re just going to apologise for it?’

_‘No,’_ Gwyn said in frustration. ‘I never apologised to you for you torturing me, I’m not that fucking stupid.’

‘You’re apologising to me, the one who like, fucked up your boyfriend on purpose, more than once, because that makes sense to you? In what world does that make sense to you? Do you know how much I dream of getting like a whole dirty toilet brush inside of him?’

_Pretty much not even once,_ Efnisien thought. But whatever, he’d always played a good game, he might as well play it now. He found himself slipping towards that old charm, but where he had a smoothness before, it was rough and he plucked the words from decaying spaces inside of himself and presented them without a smile.

‘You,’ Efnisien said, laughing. ‘You apologising to me? That’s-’

Gwyn lunged towards him, and Efnisien skittered backwards so quickly that he fell off his chair. He pushed back another three feet, holding up an arm. Gwyn froze, but anger was all over his face.

_‘Stop_ bringing up Augus,’ Gwyn said.

‘Why?’ Efnisien said, finding a strand of cockiness and throwing himself into it hard enough to lose track of why he’d fallen off his chair in the first place. He pushed himself up and swallowed the grunt he wanted to make over how tight his stomach and belly felt. ‘Is it easier for you to pretend I’m not super evil, if I’m not talking about how great raping him would be? Do _you_ ever think about it? I bet he’d make the best fucking noises.’

_‘Efnisien.’_

‘No but think about it. His hole gaping and wide, nice little rosebud because he’d been used so fucking much. And like, he’s a crybaby right? I bet- I bet he’d-’ Gwyn came for him again, and Efnisien started laughing, high and wild, because it was so easy. It was so easy. It was just like the old days. Nothing had changed at all. ‘Hey, hey, hey, Gwyndoline, calm your tits. I wouldn’t fuck your piece of shit boyfriend even if he spread his legs for it and _begged_ me.’

_Because I’ve never wanted to fuck anyone._

He hated that little level voice inside of him, because it was his tone of voice, but it was delivered in Dr Gary’s certain, even manner. Like it was a fact.

‘I don’t know what this is about,’ Gwyn said, breathing heavily, angrily. ‘But if you want me to see you more often, this isn’t the way to go about getting into my good graces.’

Efnisien felt his eyes prickle, just for a few seconds. No, he didn’t want that. He just wanted Gwyn’s first response to Efnisien having a friend to not be what it was. That’s all.

And it was a stupid thing to want, because Gwyn’s response was the right one.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘Got it. No more saying it out loud, I’ll just daydream about it. We’ll table the Augus-rape so that it’s no longer verbal. You can just look at me and know I’m dreaming of it.’

Gwyn’s eyes narrowed at him, and Efnisien felt something feral and giddy still coursing through him.

‘Hey, Gwyn,’ Efnisien said. ‘How badly do you want to hit me? I’d let you, you know. You only broke my nose the first time, but I bet you could like, break a cheekbone if you really put yourself into it. Actually, you wouldn’t even have to try. I bet you could just _do_ it. Without even hurting your hand.’

_Arden could too._

Gwyn was straightening, and now he was staring at Efnisien in a different way entirely, and Efnisien didn’t like it. He turned and walked into his meagre kitchen, staring into the sink. Gwyn didn’t break people’s faces without a good reason. If Efnisien wanted it, he couldn’t just _ask._ He had to… he had to finesse it.

He wasn’t in the mood to finesse it.

He also had to not fucking run away when Gwyn came for him.

‘Just go, all right?’ Efnisien said. ‘And don’t fucking apologise to me again.’

‘If you bring up Augus one more time like that,’ Gwyn said, ‘I’m done. Say it about anyone else, Efnisien, but if you keep talking about Augus that way, we’ll have nothing to do with each other ever again.’

Efnisien smiled bitterly at the sink, he didn’t say a word. A few seconds later Gwyn opened the door and closed it quietly behind him. Efnisien leaned over the sink and took several deep breaths.

After that he walked over to the desktop and did some transcription, losing himself in the tired drone of the PhD candidate composing their thesis as they walked around a room, sometimes talking to their partner in the background without pausing the tape. It made Efnisien feel weirdly like he belonged in that room with the PhD candidate, even though he didn’t belong anywhere.

*

_Hey, Ef. You haven’t come in for two weeks now. Did I scare ya off? This is Arden by the way._

Efnisien stared at his phone, feeling blurry. The days had passed in something of a haze, and he kept losing track of his place in the astrophysics book. It was so annoying. Maybe he was too stupid for it.

Had it been two weeks? Efnisien supposed it had been. He’d just…decided that Arden was better off with Efnisien not coming to see him. Also, he hadn’t finished the astrophysics book yet. He was surprised that Arden thought it was caused by his story about Laurie.

_You didn’t scare me off,_ Efnisien wrote. _But I don’t think that you should be hanging out with someone like me._

Efnisien startled and dropped his phone on his face when it rang. It clunked painfully into his nose and he hissed, swore, then grabbed his phone and glared. His heart was pounding out of his chest.

Reluctantly, he accepted the call.

‘What?’ he said flatly.

‘So I scared you off,’ Arden said. ‘Because it _wasn’t_ my intention to make you feel guilty enough that you decided to stop seeing me. If you don’t want to see me because I’m too fucked up for you, that’s actually fine. But if you don’t want to see me because you’re making judgement calls about my welfare, that’s kind of patronising, don’t you think? I don’t want to be patronised by you.’

‘Think about it,’ Efnisien said. ‘I’ve sexually assaulted people, Arden. I’ve groped people. More than one. I’ve really hurt them. And just because you think I’m some avatar for your brother-’

‘I told you that you _weren’t_ that,’ Arden said, his voice serious and firm. ‘Why’re you putting words in my mouth? Please don’t do that. It makes me feel like you don’t see me as a person when you do that.’

Efnisien blinked, then pushed up from his bed and rubbed at his hair. It was already messy, so it didn’t matter how much he rubbed at it. ‘I just think you’re making a mistake.’

‘So let me _make_ it,’ Arden said, his voice enthusiastic. ‘Let me make the mistake, and let me own it! You’ve warned me, okay? You’ve warned me many times, Efnisien. You have – by far and away – done your due diligence. In fact if anything, you come across like someone who is actually really terrified of hurting anyone. Maybe sometimes that’s not true. Maybe sometimes you really just want to murder someone. Well, okay! We’ll cross that bridge if we ever come to it. But I’m forearmed, forewarned, and I can look after myself. Are you going to come back to my bookstore?’

‘Not today,’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t feel well.’

‘What?’ Arden said, his voice shifting again. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong.’

‘Not feeling well means that something’s wrong,’ Arden said. ‘Can I do anything?’

‘What the fuck are you gonna do?’ Efnisien said, and then realised he was just being rude. So fucking rude. ‘Sorry. Sorry. I’ve been in a bad mood.’

‘I mean you haven’t been seeing me, so I don’t really blame you.’

Efnisien snorted in spite of himself, a tendril of something warm slipping into him after a week of feeling miserable.

‘I have it on good authority that even though I overshare like there’s no tomorrow, I’m actually fun to be around!’ Arden said, humming like he was considering it. ‘Anyway, _I_ think I’m fun to be around. You’re probably having Arden-withdrawals.’

‘I’m not,’ Efnisien said, smiling.

‘There’s only really one way to fix Arden-withdrawals,’ he said. ‘You know what the solution is, don’t you?’

‘Lemme guess, I come to your bookstore?’

‘Let me, Efnisien ap Wledig, let me pick a book for you, any colour spine you want, any subject. Alllll you have to do is come in and let me look after you.’

Efnisien felt his insides do a weird little jerk at the way Arden spoke to him. He swallowed, flustered and feeling rawer than he had a minute ago. It was like he’d put himself in a box, and Arden had lifted the box away and found where he was hiding in seconds. Even Efnisien couldn’t do that.

‘Next week?’ Efnisien said hopefully.

‘Of course! As long as I get to see you. And also, like, if you need a break from me, you should take one! I was just beginning to worry that maybe you were, y’know, doing your whole head in about what happened. That was a hard night for you, Ef, and I’m sorry for the part I played in making you feel bad.’

‘Honestly, it wasn’t really you. It’s just been a bad week.’

‘Want to talk about it?’

‘Nah. It’s just boring shit.

‘It’s hard to imagine you could ever be boring,’ Arden said, his voice lower, deeper. Efnisien pressed his lips together and didn’t know how he was supposed to feel, but his body was a bit shivery. Arden’s voice rose to enthusiastic heights once more. ‘I gotta go! Customers! Hey, sorry for calling, I know it’s the greatest faux pas of our generation. Your generation. God, I’m old. But I’m probably going to do it again. I commit social faux pas all the time.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ Efnisien said.

‘I know, right? It’s the sound of my voice. I’m naturally great to talk to. Shit, no, I really have to go, they have kids. They have _kids,_ ’ Arden hissed. _‘Young ones.’_

‘They’re going to lick all your books.’

‘I _know._ Bye, Ef! See you soon.’

Arden hung up, and Efnisien stared at his phone and then pressed it to his chest, staring out into his room and feeling pacified for the first time in about two weeks. 


	15. Aversions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But seriously tho how the fuck are we up to chapter 15 already. Glad y’all are on this fever dream rollercoaster with me.
> 
> Warning for an intrusive memory focusing on some of Robert Berdella’s (real) crimes that he committed against his victims. Also just general Efnisien shenanigans.

Dr Gary was waiting for him outside of the door leading into his office, which never happened, which meant Dr Ferguson was already in the office. Efnisien stared at Dr Gary, feeling cold all over despite the jumper _and_ the scarf. After washing it, he’d decided to wear it today, feeling frazzled and definitely _not_ wanting anything to do with this fucking session. He wanted to wrap the whole scarf around his face and disappear.

‘Remember everything we went over last week?’ Dr Gary said steadily. ‘This is your session, you employ us, and you can order one or both of us to leave at any point, or you can walk out.’

‘Uh huh,’ Efnisien said, staring at the door and thinking about Dr Henton and feeling like he was going to vibrate right the fuck out of his flesh.

‘All right, come on in.’

Dr Gary opened the door, and Efnisien walked in. His eyes widened when he realised that Dr Ferguson looked _nothing_ like Dr Henton. He didn’t know why he assumed they’d look the same, but they didn’t.

Dr Ferguson was slender and wiry, he had long, wavy blue hair that was purple at the tips, and blue eyelashes, and blue glasses, and he wore a blue Hawaiian shirt, and he was definitely wearing lip gloss or something. Efnisien stared at him, stared at Dr Gary as if to say, _You couldn’t have given me a fucking heads up?_

Then he made himself sit in the chair he always sat in. Dr Gary sat alongside Dr Ferguson, which Efnisien thought was basically like cornering prey at this point.

Dr Ferguson looked at Efnisien and smiled, it seemed genuine enough, then he looked at something on his tablet. Which had a blue cover.

‘You…’ Efnisien said, his voice drying up in his throat when Dr Ferguson looked up at him again. He had a really feminine face. ‘You really like blue, huh?’

‘Today I do,’ Dr Ferguson said.

‘Huh.’

A lot of words were floating up inside of him. Offensive words. And spontaneously that PhD candidate’s thesis on microaggressions and slurs floated up in his head and he realised he had no idea what kind of person Dr Ferguson was. What _gender._ But Dr Gary had used he and him pronouns, so like, a guy? He had a guy’s voice. It was softer and sweeter than Dr Gary’s, but it was still a guy’s voice. Efnisien had no fucking idea. Dr Ferguson’s hair looked really silky and nice.

‘Should we get started?’ Dr Ferguson said in a voice that sounded like it wouldn’t be amiss sweetly selling pastries in a bakery. ‘Dr Gary has let me look over parts of your file, and I know that this is a difficult session for you, so I’m going to infodump in the first ten minutes to make sure you at least get some benefit of my knowledge before you kick me out. Anyway, please call me Mika. I don’t care much for honorifics.’

‘Are you a doctor, though? You um, you did your thesis? What did you do it in?’

Dr Gary was staring at him with a calculating look on his face. Efnisien recalled he’d never asked Dr Gary what his thesis was in. He felt embarrassed, humiliated, like he was doing the wrong thing already.

‘I am a doctor,’ Mika said. ‘I did my thesis on the psychological health of nonbinary and genderqueer teenagers in public school systems, with specific focus on sex offenders and victims of sexual abuse. And then my thesis supervisor got mad at me and told me to either drop the victims or the sex offenders, or to split it into two separate theses, so I wrote two theses. And then I published two books.’

‘And that is what we call a professional over-achiever,’ Dr Gary said wryly. Mika smiled at him, then tucked a lock of blue hair behind his ear.

‘So! I’m generally called in to consult with juveniles and young adults like yourself, who have had experiences that might have led them to feel confused about their sexuality or gender above and beyond what we call a more ‘normal experience.’ Not that such a thing really exists. I specialise in sex offenders and sexual assault victims, so I didn’t stray too far from my theses at all. Anyway, my job is to give you a quick crash course on sexuality, orientation and gender, since the school system does a dismal job and you might not have paid attention that day anyway. Then there’s a short assessment to see if there are any areas that it might be worth investigating further.’

‘I know I’m a guy,’ Efnisien said.

‘That’s great,’ Mika said. ‘That’s a great start. Also, for the record, no matter _what_ we talk about, if you disagree with anything the assessment says, or that I say, that’s completely okay. How you feel about yourself takes precedent.’

‘Right,’ Efnisien said, nervous and on edge. He bit the skin at the edge of his thumb too hard, then looked at the plant in the corner of the room. ‘I’m pretty sure I’m just into family members. Is that a sexual orientation?’

‘It could be,’ Mika said, sounding completely unperturbed. He’d obviously gone to the same school of ‘how to not look shocked by anything ever’ that Dr Gary went to.

Over the next ten minutes, Efnisien learned more about sexualities and how many there were and how many more there _could_ be, and sat there kind of shocked. He’d really only thought there was like, homosexuality, heterosexuality and bisexuality. He was wrong. He was glad he only had to listen, it was obviously a talk Mika had delivered before. Efnisien could tell Mika skimmed over the gender part, though Efnisien was curious to know what Mika would say. Probably something like there were way more genders in the world than Efnisien ever knew about, and more besides.

‘Now, with this assessment,’ Mika said, bringing it up on his tablet. ‘I want you to answer in context of the last three months only. Not how you felt growing up, or even how you felt last year, but the last three months, okay? Is that going to be a problem?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, feeling uncharacteristically meek. Having both of them sitting in front of him intimidated the shit out of him. Even if Mika wasn’t like Dr Henton and didn’t give off the same vibe, Efnisien still felt deeply uncertain about this session in the first place. He also felt kind of embarrassed talking about these things in front of Dr Gary.

He realised there was stuff he didn’t like to talk about at all with Dr Gary. Maybe that was what Dr Gary picked up on when he decided to suggest that Efnisien see Mika.

‘All of these are multiple choice, you’re probably very familiar with assessments by now. Unlike most standard assessments, instead of answering with responses like ‘five’ meaning ‘very likely’ or ‘always’ and one meaning ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ – this assessment uses a one to ten scale from never to always.’

‘Cool.’

‘Let’s get started! Over the past three months, have you experienced enjoyable thoughts of sex?’

‘One,’ Efnisien said, then closed his eyes. Yep. That sounded about right.

The assessment only took about fifteen minutes, but he blushed and wanted to grind his teeth all the way through it. So now Dr Gary knew he hadn’t masturbated for three months. He knew Efnisien didn’t think about sex in a fun way ever. He knew Efnisien had kind of had gay-ish thoughts about a guy. Could they be gay if Efnisien didn’t think about sex? Whatever, the way the question was worded made it clear they were _gay-ish thoughts._ He hadn’t had any thoughts like that about women.

_Fag._

He thought of the way Lludd had reacted to Gwyn, when Gwyn had gotten his ass all torn up because he liked to get dicked down. He remembered all the things Lludd said, a complete invective of homophobic hatred while he destroyed Gwyn and sent him several metres across the room with a series of brutal kicks. One after the other after the other all to the torso and back. Gwyn hadn’t reacted for long minutes after that, and Efnisien remembered his high, frightened, hysterical laughter while Lludd looked up and _glared_ at him, and Efnisien waited to see if Gwyn was alive because his chest wasn’t fucking moving.

Sometimes Lludd liked to shoulder-check him in the corridors when Crielle was around. Not enough to do anything more than make him stumble, or sometimes hit a wall. And Efnisien would laugh like it was a joke, and Lludd would give him that _look._

But nothing was like waiting for Gwyn to breathe, and Lludd glaring at him, and Efnisien wondering who he’d turn all that rage on if he fucking beat his own son to death.

‘Efnisien, can you give me a number between one and ten?’ Dr Gary said. Efnisien blinked rapidly, then shrank back into his seat when he realised Dr Ferguson was there too, staring at him in concern.

‘Um,’ Efnisien said. ‘It’s not an intrusive… It’s not-’

‘Is it a memory?’ Dr Gary said. Efnisien nodded rapidly. ‘Can you still give it a number between one and ten for me?’

‘Maybe a five,’ Efnisien said, trying not to look at Dr Ferguson. God, he was so fucking weak. He couldn’t keep his shit together for more than twenty five minutes.

‘Do we need to stop?’ Mika said.

Efnisien cleared his throat and shook his head. Whatever, it was fine, Gwyn hadn’t died and then he’d gotten out of that house anyway and Efnisien had hated him for it, but he’d never been stupid enough to not understand it. He understood Crielle was awful to Gwyn, he did, he understood that _he_ was awful to Gwyn, sort of, not like Crielle and Lludd, but bad all the same. Yet there was nothing in the world like watching Lludd just fucking unleash himself onto his son and know that his violence was still contained.

All of that fury, and he still contained it. Lludd could’ve murdered twenty people in a row and it would’ve been controlled, compared to the rage that really simmered in him. Efnisien thought he could probably kill hundreds of people with his bare hands and be willing to keep going. There was something in the glint of his eyes which was just constantly cold and dead, like the only thing that powered him was rusted gears of outrage that he couldn’t kill people whenever he fucking wanted.

‘Efnisien?’ Dr Gary said. Efnisien jolted and stared down at his knees.

‘So am I fag?’ he said quickly, to cover up the fact that the memory kind of wasn’t _going the fuck away_ like it was supposed to.

‘Maybe,’ Dr Ferguson said, unhelpfully. ‘I’m going to send you some information about asexuality. It’s worth reading about that, and sexual attraction as well as other types of attraction. I’m not certain you experience sexual attraction the way most allosexual people do. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about today was BDSM. Dr Gary told me that you thought it was something serial killers do?’

‘I mean…it is…’ Efnisien said. ‘It is something they do.’

‘They also use cooking knives to stab people, but does that mean the way you describe a cooking knife to someone is through serial killers using them to stab people? Or would you describe their primary function instead?’

‘To _stab things,’_ Efnisien said darkly. _Ask me how I know, dipshit._

‘Well, yes, to stab or cut or slice food. To eat. To live,’ Dr Ferguson said, smiling gently. ‘BDSM was an acronym that came into use in 1991, and was used as a catch-all phrase for many different erotic and roleplaying practices, in consensual relationships that often – but not always – have an agreed-to power imbalance during scenes. The most important part in all of this is that it was invented as a term for people in intimate interpersonal relationships or engaging in consensual intimate scenes, to describe erotic practices that were outside of the norm. BDSM encapsulates bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism.’

‘You’re like a Wikipedia page,’ Efnisien said.

‘That’s not the first time I’ve been told that, and it won’t be the last,’ Dr Ferguson said, grinning. ‘I did say I’d be infodumping. My point is that BDSM is often misunderstood by many people. If your primary association is serial killers, you’re missing out on the fundamental building block of consent and mutual interpersonal interest. BDSM isn’t something inflicted on a stranger without their knowledge, it is something chosen. Can it be abused? Yes, like anything, it absolutely can be abused. Is that what it is at its most fundamental? Not even a little.’

The truth was, Efnisien hadn’t thought much about the Uncosy Book Corner since he’d entered it, because he wanted to stay friends with Arden. But he also wasn’t stupid. Arden said he found Efnisien attractive. Arden talked to him sometimes in ways that Efnisien was pretty sure counted as flirting. Arden hugged him. Arden had placed his warm hands over Efnisien’s freezing ears and told him to bow his head in front of him and Efnisien…

Efnisien delicately tried not to think about it, because it left him feeling a bit airless every time.

He also desperately didn’t want to talk about it in front of Dr Gary.

‘Um,’ he said, feeling stupid, afraid, unable to believe what he was going to ask. ‘Can I…? Can I talk to Mika for like, a few minutes, real quick? Just Mika?’

‘Yes!’ Dr Gary said, sounding surprised. ‘Of course. I’ll be right outside.’

Efnisien nodded and Dr Gary walked out. Efnisien’s heart started to do a _thing_ which felt like the prelude to a panic attack or a heart attack. He did not like being alone in a room with other therapists. At all. It didn’t matter how Mika looked or behaved. Dr Henton had been nice at first, too.

‘Can I stand?’ he asked, feeling agitated, but not in that way where he wanted to scratch someone’s face off. In that way where he wanted to bolt.

‘Of course,’ Mika said.

Efnisien nodded and stood, then walked to the opposite side of the room and kept the chair between them both.

‘So, uh. There’s this… person. And he- Like I don’t really ever think about sex with him, but I still think about him… like, touching me. Or like, fuck, fuck this is so fucking gay. Like hugging me. I think about that. Is it bad if that’s basically what I want?’

‘No, not at all,’ Mika said. ‘If you want that in a friendship, that’s completely okay. If you want that in a relationship and nothing more, that’s also okay. There are people who have relationships with no sex at all. People who have relationships without romance. People who have relationships with sex only once or twice a year at most. No one can define what your relationship or intimacy needs are except yourself. Also, ah, I think you may be sex averse. Basically thinking about sex at this stage of your recovery causes you some distress. It may always cause you some distress. Have you considered talking to this person about what you want?’

‘I told him I didn’t want to fuck,’ Efnisien said, aware that his breathing was shallow.

Mika watched him closely, then looked down at his tablet, eyebrows furrowing. ‘Is he pressuring you to have sex?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘Um, actually, no, he’s really not. He- I think he flirts with me sometimes. But it’s hard to tell, because… I don’t know about any of this fucking shit.’

Mika seemed completely nonplussed by Efnisien’s swearing and his coarse manner. He was writing notes onto his tablet. He hadn’t negotiated with Efnisien to not take notes the way during a session Dr Gary had, so Efnisien decided it wasn’t worth caring about. Besides, every time Mika looked down, it was more time not to feel absolutely terrified that a therapist who wasn’t Dr Gary was looking at him.

‘Is sex aversion bad?’ Efnisien heard himself ask.

‘No,’ Mika said. ‘Though there is a disorder – sexual aversion disorder – but frankly the DSM is kind of in the dark ages about gender and sexuality. It’s getting better, but by getting better, we mean it’s progressed from the stone age to the iron age, and it’s still got a _long_ way to go.’

‘I don’t want any more disorders,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘I don’t want to diagnose you with any,’ Mika said cheerfully. ‘And I see no reason to, today! Besides, I’m not your primary care therapist, it’s not my job. Now, you’re looking a bit peaky, should I get Dr Gary back in here?’

Efnisien nodded and started biting at the skin on the corner of his thumb. It took only a minute for it to start bleeding, and he kept the blood there on his tongue as Dr Gary came back and looked between them.

‘Is everything okay?’ he said to Efnisien.

‘Mm, just wanted to stand,’ Efnisien said. ‘There’s no law against standing.’ 

‘It’s a good way for you to self-regulate your distress,’ Dr Gary said calmly, as he sat next to Mika again. ‘Are you okay for Mika to stay a bit longer?’

Efnisien shrugged, then realised Dr Gary wouldn’t like that response, and made himself nod. His thumb was still bleeding. He thought of Arden and the way he’d put the Band-Aid on Efnisien’s thumb that time. The way his hands had hovered around Efnisien’s hand. The way he’d asked permission to touch him.

Twitchily, he reached out to the tissue box on Dr Gary’s desk and grabbed a tissue and shoved his thumb into it before they could see the damage.

‘Am I not…’ Efnisien stared down at the wadded up tissue over his thumb. He squeezed at the base of his thumb and it throbbed, and he knew more blood was coming out. He made himself stop, but he wanted to keep squeezing at it. ‘Am I not like, into sex and stuff, because I don’t have family around me anymore? Like, do I not think about that stuff anymore because I’m- With the incest…is it just…?’

_Someone fucking throw me a rope here. So I can hang myself with it._

‘Were you into sex before?’ Dr Gary said, jumping in before Mika could say a word. ‘You’ve never indicated to me that you wanted to have sex with Gwyn or Crielle.’

‘No, but…’ Efnisien couldn’t convey what he was trying to say. Frustrated, he stood there by the books and thought that maybe he was too stupid to say it. He couldn’t get his head around that astrophysics book and he knew he had to talk to Dr Gary about that visit with Gwyn at some point and he knew Dr Gary was going to be completely unsurprised that it’d gone badly. Because Dr Gary hadn’t been a fan of Efnisien’s meet-ups with Gwyn for a little while.

_‘It’s normal and appropriate for victims to not see or recognise or validate your recovery. There will always be a part of him on guard and aware of your capacity for abuse and torture, and that’s not compatible with your present self, and where you want to head in the future. It’s not necessarily healthy or realistic to expect your connection with him to improve as you improve.’_

That’s what Dr Gary said once, about six months earlier. Efnisien had yelled at him for the next twenty minutes and then thrown a book across the room. Dr Gary had stared at him and looked almost pitying.

‘This dude has like a special interest in BDSM,’ Efnisien said. ‘Like, he even has um, in his bookstore, he has a whole back section for just…that kind of stuff. Does that mean Arden’s into like, really extreme stuff?’

‘Arden?’ Mika said, his eyes widening. ‘Do you mean Arden Mercury?’

A rush of weird, gross warmth shoved its way through him, like maybe Arden Mercury was bad news and everyone knew it except for him.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said.

Mike was silent for so long that Dr Gary turned and looked at him.

‘Is that bad?’ Efnisien said. ‘Is he bad?’

‘No!’ Mika said, shaking his head, then laughing. ‘No! It’s only- He’s one of the most reputable dominants in the city. He runs courses, classes and workshops at most of the good BDSM clubs. He has a Youtube channel. You could do worse than learning about BDSM from someone like Arden Mercury. I got some of my education in the field specifically from going to some of his workshops.’

‘You… What?’ Efnisien said. ‘But he hasn’t… After I saw the books, he hasn’t brought it up once.’

Was BDSM really that much of a big deal to Arden?

‘Perhaps he saw how you reacted to the subject and decided not to bring it up again,’ Dr Gary said quietly. ‘Maybe he’s trying to be respectful, or alternatively, he’s worried about making you upset again.’

‘He’s really-? But…’

‘Listen,’ Mika said. ‘You don’t have to learn about those things at all, and from the way Arden’s reacted, he knows that too. He knows that better than most. Maybe you’re not destined to be friends, and I don’t know what he’s like in his personal life, but he is educated on the subject. He wouldn’t be a bad person to talk to about this.’

‘Provided you feel safe enough around him to do so,’ Dr Gary amended, his voice firm. ‘With all due respect to Mika, all of this needs to work on your schedule and your timeline. Just because someone’s an expert in their field, doesn’t mean you have to talk to them about it, or are ever obligated to talk to them about it.’

‘Of course,’ Mika said. ‘I apologise, that’s one hundred percent true. I think my bias is leaking in because I know him, and because I have a lot of respect for him as an educator.’

Efnisien nodded. He kind of wanted to text Arden about it. Kind of wanted to ask Arden if he was a big deal. Arden seemed like the kind of person who didn’t big-note himself. He didn’t show off about being a fourth dan in judo, but the judo book had made it clear it was a big fucking deal. Arden hadn’t bragged to Efnisien once about his role in the BDSM community, and had only apologised about exposing Efnisien to that section of the bookstore without warning.

_What else doesn’t he tell me?_

But he also couldn’t stop thinking of the way Mika had called Arden a ‘reputable dominant,’ and the way Arden’s fingers had rested over his ears and encouraged him to keep his head down. It’d been nice. It’d been more than nice. But it’d made his heart race, like maybe it was dangerous, too. Dangerous to have nice things.

In spite of himself, he also thought of Robert Berdella. He thought of that fucking serial killer torture and murder log and he thought of all of Berdella’s victims chained or tied up until they lost function in their hands. He thought of how Berdella injected bleach into his victim’s throats so they couldn’t talk or scream for help, how Berdella had fucked them, made them compliant through torture so they became obedient little pets, how Berdella still hurt them, still always killed them. No matter how obedient they were, he always killed them.

He imagined it. Berdella sawing and cutting through his victim’s bodies once they were meat, after torturing them for days or weeks. After they died of septicaemia from never being treated properly, or starvation, or just Berdella losing his patience. The sound of the knife sawing through flesh. The crinkling of the plastic bag as Berdella slid Larry Wayne Pearson’s head into it, the cold of the freezer air on Berdella’s face as he put Pearson’s head into his freezer.

‘…en? Efnisien? Can you give me a-’

‘Eight,’ Efnisien said. Saying the number didn’t bring him back into the room properly. He was foggily aware of Mika and Dr Gary, but he could feel the freezer’s cold air on his face, like he was Berdella, like he was standing in front of the freezer with that head in his hands sliding it in. And he tried not to think about the fact that he also felt like he was the head in a plastic bag. He was just cut up meat. He’d been tortured and raped and he was now bits and pieces, staring at Berdella’s foggy appearance through the condensation on the plastic. He didn’t want to be Berdella putting the head in the freezer, but he didn’t want to be Pearson either.

‘Okay,’ Dr Gary said, his voice louder than normal. Dr Gary stood and said something to Mika, and Mika stood, nodded and said goodbye. Efnisien was aware of jerking his head in acknowledgement, on autopilot. Then he was aware of nothing at all, except being suffocated in that plastic bag, unable to breathe, bleach in his throat, and Berdella there staring at him with those empty, cold, dead eyes.

A loud snapping noise, and Efnisien jolted and bumped into the books behind him, staring at Dr Gary’s hand.

‘Good,’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien blinked at him, feeling dislocated from the entire _planet_. His breathing shook.

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said, staring at Efnisien like he was making up his mind about something. ‘You did very well today. Can you name five things you can see in the room?’

A freezer. A head in a bag. The fog. Berdella. The syringe of bleach. The murder and torture logs. The blood. The lacerations on his wrists. Septicaemia in his gut, and peritonitis. Berdella telling him that if Efnisien didn’t obey, he’d be killed too. Efnisien closed his eyes, and twitched like he’d been shocked with electricity when Dr Gary snapped his fingers again.

‘Efnisien, concentrate,’ he said. ‘I know it’s hard. But I want you to concentrate on my voice, and on this room.’

‘Fuck off,’ Efnisien said. His voice was shaking. ‘This is so fucking stupid. This is such…’

_Such bullshit._

He was so tired of himself. He’d been handling everything fine, hadn’t he? So why was he flipping out _now?_

‘Five things in the room, Efnisien. Come on, just like always, you can do this. You can start with me if you want, or my fingers.’

Dr Gary was still holding his hand up in the air, ready to snap his fingers again. And his voice was firm. It was reassuring in how it sounded like Efnisien had no choice but to calm down. It made it sound like being stuck as a head in a plastic bag in a freezer wasn’t an inevitability. He wasn’t Berdella. He wasn’t Pearson. He wasn’t going to be Berdella-Pearson forever.

Dr Gary’s fingers snapped again and Efnisien grit his teeth together. He hated the way it derailed his brain, like Dr Gary was shoving his index finger right into Efnisien’s ear.

‘Your fingers,’ he said, annoyed.

‘Good, very good. Four more things. You can do it.’

_I can’t,_ Efnisien wanted to complain. He felt so miserable. But he could. He could see things in the room again. Even if he could also see the freezer, the plastic bag, all of that too.

‘The plant,’ he said, looking at it for a second. ‘The…wooden floorboards. The rug. The tissue my thumb is in.’

‘Very good,’ Dr Gary said, smiling up at him. He hadn’t gotten up from his chair, but he was sitting right on the edge of it, and his arm was stretched out as far as it could go. He was still ready to snap his fingers. It was kind of reassuring. ‘Now, four things you can hear? Start with my voice.’

‘Your voice,’ Efnisien said, sagging back against the bookshelf and feeling like his chest had crumpled. ‘My voice. My breathing. Um. The sound- Your… Your laptop is humming.’

‘Three things you can feel?’

Normally Efnisien answered that question with mundane things. The texture of the armrest beneath his hand. The way the floor felt against his shoes. But he couldn’t seem to bring himself to feel those things properly.

‘My stomach hurts,’ he said. He never really meant his stomach. He meant his entire abdomen, from sternum to pelvis. But no one said it that way, so he just said he had a stomach-ache. ‘My… My thumb in the tissue. The books aren’t that comfortable to lean against.’

‘The chair would be more comfortable,’ Dr Gary said, encouraging him. ‘Much more comfortable. Would you like to sit down?’

Efnisien nodded, but it took a little while to convince his body to move. He walked across the room and sat too heavily, wrapping his arm around his gut. He stared at Dr Gary’s laptop on his desk. He could feel how badly his body was tensed, like he was trying to stop himself from shaking.

‘Was it an intrusive thought or a memory?’ Dr Gary asked gently.

‘The first,’ Efnisien said. And then because he knew Dr Gary would ask: ‘Berdella.’

‘Good. Thank you for telling me. I don’t think now’s the time to go into the details, since you seem to be a bit too close to it, and it’s obviously distressing. Listen, Efnisien, in the future – if you decide to see Mika again – you can send him out as often as you want. You don’t have to tough these sessions out because you feel that’s the right thing to do.’

‘I didn’t know I was going to flip out,’ Efnisien said. He rubbed at his face and then at his hair. He tucked his chin into the scarf. ‘I didn’t know. There’s been a lot of stuff going on. And, stuff with Gwyn too. Just lots of stuff.’

‘Do you want to see me twice next week?’ Dr Gary said.

‘I dunno if I can afford it,’ Efnisien said, feeling ashamed. He tried not to bring up money at all with Dr Gary. He knew he was privileged to even be seeing someone as qualified as him. He had no reason to complain about money.

Dr Gary hesitated, then he looked like he was going to ask something and stopped himself, then he took a sharp breath and said: ‘Efnisien, your parent’s stipend…’

He paused again. That wasn’t really like him at all.

‘Does your parent’s stipend not cover these sessions?’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien ground his thumb into the tissue until he could feel the throbbing all the way to the base of his thumb. He tentatively pulled it back and it wasn’t even bleeding anymore. It hurt more now than it did when he’d broken the skin.

‘I can’t access it,’ Efnisien said. ‘The bank account.’

He’d managed to avoid admitting it for so long. God, he was so tired. He thought about how he’d gone at Gwyn like that, he’d turned absolutely feral at the end. He hated how he got that way around Gwyn. He just wanted to apologise to him, he never did. Instead he said a ton of shit to watch his blue eyes light up with rage, and he hoped Gwyn would punch him so hard that his whole head would cave in.

‘How long have you not been able to access that account?’ Dr Gary said, his voice sharp enough that Efnisien flinched. Dr Gary sounded angry.

‘Since Hillview,’ Efnisien said.

Dr Gary sucked in a breath. Efnisien refused to look at him.

‘I’m not a signatory on the account,’ Efnisien said dully. ‘And the funds only released while I was in Hillview, because that was a condition of access. But as soon as I got out…’

‘What did your parents say?’

‘I don’t have their numbers,’ Efnisien said, smiling to himself. ‘Business as usual with them, I guess. I mean I have their numbers, but when I ring, I always get that voice that says the numbers are disconnected. I haven’t rung them in a while.’

Dr Gary was silent for so long and Efnisien wondered if he was _really_ mad that Efnisien had refused to talk about any of this for two years. But Efnisien hadn’t wanted to. He could afford the sessions. It didn’t matter. He had money. He had enough money to live. He wasn’t poor, because he could afford food and his bills, and he could get therapy once a week. It didn’t matter if he was cut off from his parent’s health insurance as well, because it wasn’t like he’d ever had much to do with Penny and Euro in the first place.

‘I’ve been charging you on the assumption that you’ve had access to that stipend,’ Dr Gary said tightly. ‘I’ve been charging you full price. I am well aware that I’m not a ‘cheap’ specialist.’

Efnisien shrugged.

‘Efnisien, I have a _sliding scale,_ which means…’

Dr Gary stopped talking. Efnisien had nothing to say. After a while Efnisien lifted one of his legs fully onto the chair, his sneaker perched on the end of the cushion, thigh pressing into his chest.

‘What did you think would happen if you told me that you didn’t have access to the account?’ Dr Gary asked. ‘That your parents haven’t given you a way to contact them?’

‘I didn’t think about it. I didn’t want to talk about it.’

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said. He took a huge breath and sighed it out, and Efnisien knew he was angry and disappointed and didn’t think Efnisien was good at all. Because he wasn’t. Efnisien rested his chin on his knee and stared at Dr Gary’s laptop, feeling heavy and idiotic. ‘I’d like you to send me an average weekly or monthly income, and I’ll work out a new fee.’

‘I can pay the full fee.’

‘I am aware of that, you’ve been paying it needlessly for two years,’ Dr Gary said quietly. ‘But I am compensated more than amply for my job, and one of the benefits of that means I can afford to charge my outpatient and private clients according to a sliding scale. Do you want me to chase up the bank account?’

‘You have the same numbers I do,’ Efnisien said, smiling into the scarf. ‘You won’t get through to them.’

‘Do you think they intended to cut you off in this manner?’ Dr Gary said.

‘I think Crielle maybe had something to do with it,’ Efnisien said. ‘My parents don’t really give a shit, and they’re loaded. But Crielle… I dunno. Maybe it was my parents. But they’ve never cared enough about me to want to hurt me or anything.’

‘May I make a note?’ Dr Gary said. Efnisien nodded.

Dr Gary made a bunch of notes. Efnisien heard him tapping away at his computer for way longer than normal. And then he turned back to face Efnisien and sighed. Again. Efnisien couldn’t remember the last time Dr Gary had sighed that much.

‘Are you mad?’ Efnisien asked.

‘Not at you,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I wish you’d trusted me enough to tell me earlier.’

‘It wasn’t about trust, I just didn’t want to tell you.’

‘Did you think that I’d somehow bar you from seeing me, if you told me?’ 

‘No,’ Efnisien said. Though he had been kind of afraid of that, so he shrugged to indicate that maybe he did think that. ‘I thought I was being lazy in not chasing it up properly. I should’ve been more…persistent with the bank about it. The bank was pretty final about it when I talked to them, but maybe I could’ve…I dunno. And then I thought you should get paid the full amount for your job whether it’s my parent’s money or mine, and I wasn’t about to tell you I couldn’t afford to see you. Because I can afford to see you.’

‘Efnisien,’ Dr Gary said, ‘I appreciate that you were thoughtful enough to want to pay me the full fee. That’s very considerate of you. But it’s also inappropriate of you to assume that I’m not able to make these decisions for myself. If you’d raised this, we could have had an open and honest discussion about what you were trying to achieve, and the ways…’

Efnisien’s eyes were burning. He pressed his face into his thigh so that Dr Gary couldn’t see him anymore. He could feel the place where he was getting his jeans wet. He didn’t make a sound. Dr Gary was disappointed in him, he was angry. Efnisien worked so hard to try and make sure that Dr Gary wasn’t angry with him.

Dr Gary was silent for a long time, and Efnisien’s whole face burned with humiliation.

‘I just didn’t want to tell you,’ Efnisien said, his voice scratchy.

‘Okay,’ Dr Gary said softly.

Efnisien bit his tongue hard enough that he tasted blood. But it worked, his need to cry evaporated, like the pain was eating it away. He sucked the blood down his throat and blinked his eyes open and straightened. He didn’t look directly at Dr Gary, but he knew Dr Gary had noticed he’d gotten so upset. Efnisien hated when he got like that.

‘It didn’t seem important,’ Efnisien said, staring at Dr Gary’s desk. ‘It just didn’t seem important. It’s something I could fix, if I just got off my ass and called the bank.’

‘Do you really think you could fix it?’

Efnisien smiled bitterly at nothing. ‘I mean I thought it for a while.’

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said, sounding more reassuring than before. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to pass on the material Mika sends to me about asexuality and everything else, so that you can read it. We’ll table any further sessions with Mika for a while, until you’re feeling a bit more stable, or until you decide you want a session with him. In the meantime, I’d very much appreciate it if you could send me an average of your income, or even just some screen captures of your bank balance and the deposits that come in. That would be great. I’ll email you the new fee, and then you’ll see me twice next week, because you’ll be able to afford it.’

Efnisien nodded. ‘I’m such a pain in the ass though. I really should keep paying you the full price.’

‘If you keep dropping gold like this in the last ten minutes of the session, I’m going to have to take concurrent notes again,’ Dr Gary said with a wry smile. ‘May I make a note?’

‘You can make a million.’

Dr Gary’s smile broadened, and Efnisien felt a little calmer. His leg dropped heavily from the chair to the floor with a thud. He looked at the door. It was time to go. It was basically time to go.

‘Surely it’s not worth making notes over the fact that I hate myself,’ Efnisien said, looking at Dr Gary directly for the first time in a while.

‘That’s definitely not news,’ Dr Gary said, staring at his laptop. ‘But I think we could do some good work around your perception of yourself as a ‘pain in the ass client,’ because it’s quite different to my perception of you as a client.’

‘Sure,’ Efnisien said, rolling his eyes.

‘I am sure,’ Dr Gary said, turning back and looking at Efnisien. ‘In the meantime, I’m so proud of how you’ve handled the entire session. I have an idea – better than most – of how challenging it was for you, and you did well.’

_Really?_ That was what Efnisien wanted to ask. _Really? I did well?_

‘Even though you’re pissed at me about not telling you about my parents and shit,’ Efnisien said.

‘I’m not angry at you,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I’m frustrated that I’ve been overcharging you because of misleading information.’

‘It’s not overcharging.’

‘I’m not arguing about this with you, because it’s not something you get to decide. I decide how much I charge my clients, I had my sliding scale long before I met you, and I’m overcharging you. If you want to debate my own choices with me, we can do it in the next session, but you don’t get to decide my fees for me.’

‘You’re mad at me,’ Efnisien said, feeling sick.

‘I’m expressing a boundary,’ Dr Gary said, his voice changing cadence, turning easier, softer. ‘I’m telling you that my fees are a firm boundary and not something you get to negotiate, and that _includes_ not deciding that they should be higher than what I’d be charging someone in your situation. I think we can definitely talk about this more in the next session. I am angry that your parents have given you no way to contact them, because that means you’ve been cut off from every member of your family except your cousin, doesn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘That’s probably not a bad thing though.’

Dr Gary smiled then, a genuine smile, not his professional one. But he looked unhappy too. Efnisien wanted to apologise, but he couldn’t control what his parents did, he couldn’t make them come back or give him the right phone numbers. They’d fucked off on their permanent honeymoon when he’d been about two months old and Penny had decided that kids were really fucking boring. He didn’t blame her. Kids were really fucking boring.

‘Your support network is extremely thin on the ground,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Thinner than I realised. Even if emotional support is not something you can expect from your family, financial support is still important. But you haven’t had that either. I think we’re going to have to address that next week. But anyway, we’ve stumbled across enough content to last us a good while, I think. How are you feeling overall?’

‘Fucking tired,’ Efnisien said. ‘Kind of depressed.’

‘What are you going to do when you get home?’

‘Transcribing,’ Efnisien said. ‘And then maybe sleep.’

‘I recommend getting some sleep first,’ Dr Gary said. ‘One of the reasons you picked transcription as a job was so you could determine your own hours. Today has been psychologically draining for more than one reason, which has a marked physical impact on your fatigue and pain levels. Sleep is a good way to let your brain rest and your body heal. Remember to eat something to boost your blood sugar. It won’t hurt to make sure you’re meeting your physical needs.’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said. ‘I can do that.’

It would be easier to do, now that Dr Gary had suggested it.

He stood, feeling like he was three times heavier than he was. He wanted to go to Arden’s bookstore. He wanted to lean against Arden’s counter and annoy him while he worked.

As he left, he gave Dr Gary a thumbs up, then looked at the receptionist. She looked back at him, her gaze curious. He turned away from her and closed the door to the clinic, each step down to the pavement feeling hard on his entire body.

He didn’t look at the trees, he didn’t focus on his surroundings. The whole walk home he thought about Stupidhead in the deep sea and his house down there, where he sat on a couch in the abyssal darkness as his dumbo octopus floated around him, bobbing up and down, back and forth, hanging in the air a bit like a balloon.

And if he lived in the Mariana Trench, even his octopus couldn’t tell if he was crying, because it was all just salt water anyway.


	16. Isabelle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no author's notes I just have 6k of pure Arden and Efnisien content and a lot of love for the folks who are giving so much love to this story! Also Arden is...a lot. He's just a lot, all the time.

On Saturday morning, Efnisien nervously tried not to chew at the end of his mangled thumb, waiting on the curb of his street in front of his apartment building. Arden’s scarf was folded and washed in his hands in case Arden wanted it back. Efnisien waited, and he’d been waiting for ten minutes, and Arden wasn’t late, it was just that Efnisien was going crazy pacing the cramped space of his own fucking apartment.

It’d all come about because Arden had texted:

_‘Hey, Ef, I’ve been thinking about stuff we can do that doesn’t involve going outside as much but also isn’t hanging out in Cosy. Want to come over to my place on Saturday morning and hang out?’_

And Efnisien said yes, because what the hell, right? Arden texted his address, Efnisien searched public transport options and realised it was like three buses, and tried to find a polite way to say that he might get there a bit late. Arden promptly insisted he was planning on picking Efnisien up anyway.

So Efnisien waited on the curb, clutching the underside of the scarf, his palms sweating all over it.

He’d been in a weird mood since his session with Dr Gary and Mika. But he didn’t think it was a _bad_ mood. He’d just been…thinking of a lot of things he didn’t normally think about. Admitting his financial situation to Dr Gary had been awful at the time, and awful afterwards, and then the next day he’d dutifully sent bank account screenshots to Dr Gary, and Dr Gary had replied only two hours later with a fee that was literally a _sixth_ of what Efnisien had been paying.

Efnisien wanted to protest, but Dr Gary’s firm words at the end of their session about how it wasn’t Efnisien’s place or responsibility to negotiate his fees rattled around in his head. But fuck. _Fuck._ He had…

He had money. More money. Just like that. Efnisien could’ve choked on the feeling of knowing he wouldn’t have to stare at prices in the shops, thinking there was a lot of stuff he couldn’t afford, trying to remind himself that it was normal not to be able to afford a lot of things. He wasn’t poor. Poor people didn’t get to have a home and they didn’t get to have food. Right?

Not only that, but Dr Gary had forwarded Mika’s material on asexuality and sex aversion and some other stuff, and Efnisien had read it all at once. Some of it was on a website called AVEN, some of it was brochure-style plain language stuff that Efnisien would’ve once dismissed as bullshit, were it not for the fact that he felt a little breathless reading the words and finding them relatable.

He always thought asexuality meant like, never having any sexual feelings about anyone. And Efnisien jerked off, so he couldn’t be asexual.

But apparently it wasn’t like that _at all._

And he didn’t know if he was asexual, because all the stuff on trauma-based sex aversion seemed to hit the nail on the head too, even though he’d never been sexually assaulted. No matter what Dr Gary said.

_Henton,_ his mind usefully supplied.

‘Fuck. Off,’ Efnisien muttered to himself as he’d read the articles.

So he was maybe somewhere in the ballpark of asexuality. Maybe. Or at least adjacent to it. Possibly. And probably gay-ish. Somewhere around the gay-ish arena, at least based on that assessment he’d done. It didn’t feel _wrong_ anyway. Every time Lludd had called Gwyn a faggot and Efnisien had been around to hear it, he felt the jolt in his own gut, like Lludd was getting a two-for-one hate deal.

That had always confused him growing up, because he loved Crielle too.

But he hadn’t been into women since Crielle. He’d always assumed it was because she was like, The One. She was the only one. He’d found his true love early, as a child, and even though she was too good for him, he didn’t need anyone else. Except maybe Gwyn. Who was like Crielle but… but different.

And now he waited on the street in front of his apartment and the sky was really blue and really bright. It was colder than normal, because there weren’t any clouds in the sky to create their greenhouse effect. He wanted to smell Arden’s scarf, but it didn’t smell like anything except the washing liquid he’d used. He didn’t have fabric softener. He hadn’t used fabric softener in two years. Fabric softener was really expensive.

_I can probably afford it now._

Arden pulled up in his car. He reached across the passenger seat before Efnisien could step forwards, unlocking the passenger door and pushing it open for him.

Music was playing, but Arden turned it down as Efnisien got into the car. He went to hand the scarf back, and Arden smiled at it.

‘You got another one?’ Arden said.

Efnisien shook his head.

‘So keep it! It suits you better anyway. It was always a bit too _beige_ for me. But you know what, beige and grey and black go together in any ensemble. So it suits what you wear. Do you own anything with actual colours?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, looking down at his clothing and feeling like he’d fucked up already. Arden mocked his clothing the first time they’d met. And Efnisien had only upgraded to a jumper, and all his clothing was still really old and the hems of his black jeans were fraying.

If he was careful, maybe, he could get new jeans.

‘Did you used to when you were rich?’ Arden said.

‘No, not really,’ Efnisien said. ‘I wore a lot of white, though.’

‘You would’ve looked like an angel,’ Arden said, staring at him intently. Efnisien smiled tightly. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard that. He’d heard that from girls he ended up groping. White was a good colour for hunting. He looked away and shrugged.

‘Sometimes blue. I dunno, I didn’t really buy most of my clothing.’

Arden had been reaching to the music player on his phone, and then his hand hovered over it. ‘Because you were a teenager?’

‘Nah, I just- There was…’ Efnisien realised he had no way of explaining how Crielle liked to micromanage how he looked and appeared around others. ‘It’s complicated. I kind of lived with an um, like, a control freak, I guess. I mean she was great to me. But she liked to pick what I wore. It was easier to not really care about what I was wearing. I got to wear nice stuff, anyway.’

Most of it was tailored, too. Crielle sitting back and watching her personal tailor attend to him with that small smile on her face, like she was bringing him to life and it satisfied her to make him better than he was. About the only thing he got to control was what he wore to bed. He remembered once seeing a shirt in a music store with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s face on it, and Scheherazade Opus 35 was one of his favourite symphonic suites to listen to while he studied. He’d bought it on a whim. Crielle had taken one look at it and said it was the kind of clothing that humanities students wore, and it was beneath him.

He wore it to bed until the print of Rimsky-Korsakov’s face flaked away.

‘Your mother?’ Arden said, picking up his phone.

‘Kind of,’ Efnisien said. ‘My aunt, but she was basically my mother.’

‘Do you mind if I put the music on? Would love to keep chatting but this is a ‘no standing’ zone, whoops.’

‘Go for it,’ Efnisien said, waving his hand towards Arden’s phone and leaning back into the seat, placing the scarf on his lap like it was a rabbit.

The music came on – more indie shit – and Efnisien pressed his fingers into the scarf and looked out the window. Arden drove with confidence, and Efnisien wondered how many plants and flowers and trees and landmarks he was counting, unable to help the way his mind worked. No wonder he knew all the colours of the spines of the books in that store. It was impressive. Maybe that was why he asked about the colour of Efnisien’s clothing. Maybe his brain just liked colours.

Arden’s house was on the other side of the city. All up it was about forty minutes of solid driving. At one point they sailed down a long, straight road that Efnisien didn’t recognise, through green fields and orchards, with rustic farmhouses, mature trees lining the road.

It was kind of an okay drive. He wished the music was different, or that the song he’d heard last time would come on. At least most of the musicians sang with soft, heartfelt voices that were pretty muted. There were no divas belting it out. No loud rhythms jangling around. It was the kind of playlist someone might make if they needed to calm their mind down.

Eventually Arden slowed down a street filled with pretty brick houses that all had tiled roofs. There were large, established jacaranda trees at the front of every house, some council diligent in their street planting many decades ago.

When Arden turned into the driveway, Efnisien realised Arden had…more money than he expected. He looked quickly at Arden, then down at the scarf, feeling like maybe he was going to stand out like a sore thumb in every aspect of Arden’s life.

‘Do you live alone?’ Efnisien asked, as they walked towards the front door. The garden was all looked after and nice and shit. It wasn’t perfectly manicured, like Crielle would’ve insisted on, but there were things flowering, everything looked healthy and green and good.

‘Sort of. It’s just me and Isabelle,’ Arden said, opening a deep red door and waving Efnisien inside.

Arden followed closely behind him. Efnisien had a moment to take in the large kitchen with an island in the middle, the lounge with its comfortable, overstuffed couches, and the bookshelves all along the wall, sandwiching the large television between them. Then he heard footsteps.

And not people footsteps, but dog…dog steps.

‘She’s really enthusiastic around new people, just ignore her,’ Arden said.

Efnisien went from nerves to terror so fast, he turned to bolt. He bumped into Arden, whose hands came up to catch him. In the corner of his eye, Efnisien saw a thing that looked like a very large curly golden teddy bear running towards him.

‘I can’t,’ he said, his voice feeling like it was clogging up his throat. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t-’

The dog was _right there._ Efnisien yanked his hands up and away, his breathing strangling in his throat as he tried to get a hand on the doorknob. But Arden was standing in the way, and the dog was just bouncing around them, tongue out and so fucking excited.

‘Isabelle,’ Arden snapped in a voice that Efnisien had never heard him use before. ‘Go to your rug. Now.’

Efnisien stared as the dog hesitated for only a second, before bounding with graceless enthusiasm onto the crimson rug in the kitchen. She plonked onto it with so much fervour that it skidded about a foot, her tail thumping the tiles loud enough to make a noise.

‘I can’t be around dogs,’ Efnisien gasped.

‘Are you allergic? No? She’d never hurt a fly. Literally, she lets bees land on her nose instead of chomping at them, she’s ridiculous.’

‘I’m gonna hurt your dog,’ Efnisien said, the words feeling like they were pouring out of his mouth. ‘I can’t be around dogs.’

A juxtaposition of images flashed by so fast he didn’t properly see them all, but he knew they were all of things he’d done, or Crielle standing beside him, giving him pointers. And all throughout, the humiliation was so sharp he wanted to run. He wanted to get a hand on the doorknob and sprint all the way home. He didn’t even care if it would take hours.

_Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!_

‘Hey,’ Arden was saying. ‘Hey, Ef. Come on, take some breaths, sweetheart. She’s fine. She’s sitting on the rug and she’s fine.’

Isabelle looked like she was barely restraining herself from coming back over, and Efnisien didn’t know what he was going to do. What if he grabbed her? What if she yelped, and then he just kept hurting her? What if he rediscovered how hypnotic and drugging it could be to treat animals like that again? It’d been years, but what if he did that?

‘Stay there,’ Arden said to Efnisien, using the same firm voice he’d used with Isabelle. ‘I’m taking her outside.’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘I can- I should- I can-’

‘No,’ Arden said. ‘Just stay there. Isabelle, come on, let’s go outside!’

Isabelle got up from the rug and looked at Efnisien, practically quivering with excitement. After stamping her paws on the ground a few times, tail wagging so hard that her back was moving with it, she leaped and bounced around Arden, who walked through the house talking to her in a soft, soothing, warm tone. And then the sound of a door opening, closing, and Arden returned. Only seconds later, Efnisien heard the sound of her paws scraping on the back door, upset to be locked away from her owner.

‘I looked up Pure O,’ Arden said, walking over to Efnisien and looking up at him, a serious expression on his face. ‘I was curious, and I’d never heard of it. It’s a branch of obsessive compulsive disorder, isn’t it?’

‘I’m gonna hurt your dog,’ Efnisien said. He needed to make Arden _believe_ him.

‘Baby, she’s outside, you can’t hurt her while she’s outside,’ Arden said, and he delivered the words in such a patient, obvious way, that Efnisien felt like a child. Instead of feeling like it was bad, he clung to the words, needing them.

‘You shouldn’t reassure me,’ Efnisien said. ‘It’s bad to reassure people with Pure O. I’ve hurt dogs, Arden. I’ve really, _really_ hurt dogs.’

‘You don’t look like you’re super happy about it,’ Arden said, staring at him. ‘You told me before that you could fixate on stuff. Is this one of the things? Do you fixate on hurting animals? Because you don’t seem like you _want_ to do it, but you seem really afraid that it’s just going to happen anyway. Efnisien, you’re not being hypnotised by your brain, you can choose not to hurt her.’

‘I’ve done it before.’

‘You told me yourself that you haven’t hurt anyone – including animals – for three years, Efnisien. You’ve chosen that. You seem really committed to it.’

‘I haven’t hurt dogs for longer than that,’ Efnisien said, and then his cheeks burned. Was that making excuses for what he’d done? Did that count as making excuses even if it was true?

Crielle hated that he’d stopped hurting dogs. She hated it so much. And Efnisien worked so hard to make sure Crielle was never angry with him. It wasn’t like she was ever violent, because Crielle was _never_ violent, but her anger felt like she’d gotten her nails straight into his heart and was raking her hand down while staring at him and smiling at him with that smile. And then she wouldn’t open up to him or talk to him or kiss him or spend time with him and they didn’t go to the opera and she told him that he was losing touch with who he was supposed to be. She told him she was disappointed in him. 

‘Do you like hurting dogs?’ Arden said, his eyebrows going up.

‘I…’ _Yes! I did! I promise I did!_

Arden watched him, waited, and Efnisien’s shoulders were so tense. He abruptly looked around for judo paraphernalia, but he couldn’t see any.

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien croaked out. ‘I thought I did. I did sometimes. I must’ve sometimes. People don’t do it unless they like to do it. And sometimes I…’

He thought of that puppy, that first puppy, warm and small in his lap, and then licking his face while he cried on it. His hands were shaking.

‘I haven’t liked it in a while,’ he said. ‘A long time. But I haven’t been around dogs! So you don’t know, Arden! You don’t know what I’ll do. You can’t just fucking trust me around your fucking dog!’

‘Don’t yell,’ Arden said calmly. ‘There’s no need to yell. Firstly, Isabelle is very well trained, as you’ve seen. While she _wants_ to say hello to you, she doesn’t have to. She understands she can’t be around some people.’

‘Because they’ll hurt her?’ Efnisien said in disbelief.

‘No, because some people are scared of big dogs, and I have to make sure she can back off from people who get scared of her. I think she’s fluffy and adorable, but she’s still big, and she’s still a dog. A couple of my friends get scared. I have to make sure that she knows not to say hi to strangers that clearly don’t want anything to do with her, when I’m walking her. So she isn’t going to go anywhere near you. Which means the _only_ way you can hurt her, is if you go out of your way to hurt her. You have to _choose_ it, Efnisien. Your brain can’t just make you do something you don’t want to do.’

Efnisien stared at him, eyes wide, hanging on every word.

‘And if you look like you’re about to go out of your way to hurt her, I can stop you, Efnisien,’ Arden said, never looking away from him. ‘And I will stop you. So you _can’t_ hurt her. It doesn’t matter what you’re afraid of, it’s not going to happen. Besides, I mean I could be wrong, but from the research I’ve done, this kind of seems like classic obsessional thinking, doesn’t it? You’re afraid of doing something that you haven’t done in years and are scared of doing. Trust me, if you needed to do it that badly? You would’ve found a dog.’

‘I…’ Efnisien blinked at him. That was probably true. ‘Maybe it’s like a drug addict with drugs. They’re fine if they’re not around the drug, but-’

‘Then she can stay outside,’ Arden said.

‘But she hates that,’ Efnisien said, because he could still hear her scraping on the door, and sometimes she whined.

‘She’ll settle down.’

‘But she hates it.’

‘Efnisien,’ Arden said, laughing gently. ‘Efnisien, why do you care about how she feels, or what she hates, like that’s a bad thing – if you want to hurt her?’

Efnisien swallowed roughly. He looked back towards the door, he looked down at his sneakers. It didn’t even occur to him that Arden would have a dog. Of course he was the kind of person to have a fucking dog. It could be bright and cheerful and annoying like he was.

‘She doesn’t even have a proper name,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘What kind of name should a dog have, hm?’ Arden said, walking deeper into his house and beckoning Efnisien to follow him into the lounge. ‘Spot? Pumpkin? Champion?’

‘She has a person’s name. Look, why won’t you just- Why are you letting me _stay?’_

‘Because I have a larger degree of trust in the situation, and I don’t have your disorder, and I believe you have the power to make your own choices, I don’t think you’re at the mercy of your fixation like you do,’ Arden said. ‘I believe you’ve hurt animals. I’m not trying to tell you that you haven’t done that. However, I don’t think you _want_ to do it, judging by all of your actions and behaviour cues. In fact, I think you’re terrified of it. Maybe with some distance between now and what you’ve done, you’ve realised you don’t want to do those things anymore. It’s okay to change your mind, Ef. Just because you liked it once doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to find it frightening or hate it now.’

‘But if I did it, that means I’ll always want to do it.’ _Crielle said so._ ‘Fuck. Fuck, I’m ruining everything. Should I just go? I can like- I can catch a bus or… I can just- I mean you let me come over as a way of compromising, because I’m shit at being outside. But obviously I’m shit at being here too! Instead I’m just doing _this_ in your house. You don’t want me here.’

‘Please don’t tell me what I want,’ Arden said, even as his face creased in something like sympathy. ‘Hey, come on. It’s a hiccup, all right? Hiccups happen. Do you want something to drink?’

‘How are you okay with this?’ Efnisien burst out. ‘You know what’s supposed to happen to people like me, don’t you?’

Arden paused with the fridge door open, then turned back to Efnisien. ‘Listen, I told you about Laurie. I told you about the letters I sent him in Hillview. I know exactly what people think should happen, because I used to think it too. And you know what, sometimes I think for _some_ people, those things should still happen. People who have no capacity for remorse. People who will never change. People like my dad, okay? Please trust that I can tell the difference between people like you and people like my father.’

‘Just because Laurie showed regret doesn’t mean that I’m okay… It doesn’t mean I’m…’

Efnisien hated arguing this shit. He hated it. He felt like he was in a session with Dr Gary, except that Arden was saying different things, or saying the same things in different ways. Efnisien wanted to give in so badly. He was exhausted, he was tense, he couldn’t feel his torso, which meant it was probably going to hurt when it woke up.

‘What do you want to drink?’ Arden said, turning back to the fridge.

‘I’m not thirsty.’

‘Water, maybe?’ Arden said smiling, pulling out a glass bottle of some kind of fizzy, colourful, juice-thing for himself.

In the background, Isabelle stepped up the whining and Efnisien shuddered. That sound. That _sound._ He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, his shaking escalated.

‘She’s really upset, Arden,’ Efnisien said, his voice breaking. ‘I can’t listen to it. I have to go. I’m sorry. I’ve made dogs sound like that. Arden, you’re being _super_ nice, but-’

Arden put his glass bottle down on the island in the kitchen and walked down the corridor towards wherever Isabelle was. The sound of a door closing, another door closing, and suddenly Efnisien couldn’t hear the whining anymore.

‘Better?’ Arden said, looking at him like this was a normal exchange, like it was _normal._

Efnisien had to sit down or he was going to fucking fall down. He walked into the lounge, saw the place where a book had a bookmark in it, and figured that was where Arden sat. So he sat on the other end of the couch like his knees had stopped working. He bunched his hands together and realised he wasn’t holding the scarf. It was on the floor by the front door, where he’d dropped it when he yanked his hands up so that he didn’t accidentally hurt Arden’s dog.

‘Do I need to call Dr Gary for you?’ Arden said as he walked over with a glass of water for Efnisien, and his own juice. It looked orangey. He put the glass down, the bottle, then sat at the other end of the couch Efnisien was sitting on, instead of on the armchair, or on the other couch. ‘Or does stuff like this happen a lot?’

‘I don’t see dogs,’ Efnisien said. ‘I mean sometimes, when I walk to your bookstore, but like… I don’t- _Fuck_.’

He put his head in his hands. Fucking _useless._

‘You don’t need to call Dr Gary,’ he said. He stretched his legs out, and rubbed hard at his face. ‘Fucking hell.’

Arden sipped at his juice and didn’t say anything.

‘You called me baby,’ Efnisien said suddenly, his hands dropping, looking sharply over to Arden.

‘I called you sweetheart, too,’ Arden said, winking in that stupid way that wasn’t even a good wink.

‘Dude, you are so weird,’ Efnisien breathed. But at the same time, Arden’s ability to seem calm was, in itself, kind of calming. Efnisien tried to remember what Arden had said. Isabelle was outside, so Efnisien couldn’t hurt her unless he literally ran to do it, and Arden could stop him. Arden could flip him onto the floor as quick as people could flip burger patties. And even if Isabelle was inside, Arden could stop him. And…and…

He didn’t want to hurt her anyway. Did that count? Did that matter, if he’d done it before? Dr Gary would say that’s the whole point. His thoughts weren’t his actions. He could _decide._

‘Do you want me to stop calling you things like that?’ Arden said lightly. ‘I actually use endearments with _everyone._ But I didn’t with you. But then I did, and I kind of like it. If you hate it, I’ll stop.’

‘Just don’t call me darling,’ Efnisien said, shoving the heels of his sweaty hands into the couch. ‘Not that.’

‘Okay, baby,’ Arden said.

Efnisien scowled at him. Arden grinned.

‘Are you flirting with me?’ Efnisien said.

‘Do you want me to be flirting with you?’

‘Are you seriously flirting with me after I told you that I’d hurt your dog and made it really fucking clear that _I’ve hurt dogs?’_

‘Do you want me to be?’ Arden said, his smile broadening. And then his face cleared and he sipped at his juice as he thought over the question. ‘It would be a lot easier for you if I condemned you and kicked you out, wouldn’t it? Anyway, ah, yeah, I am flirting with you a little bit. I’m teasing you a bit, too. But hey, look, you’re not having a panic attack anymore.’

Efnisien opened his mouth in outrage and then closed it, staring at the black TV in front of him.

‘Huh,’ Efnisien said.

‘I know, right?’ Arden said. ‘But that’s not the only reason why I’m flirting with you.’

‘I said I don’t really fuck. And I saw like a sex or gender specialist this week and he kind of gave me all this reading stuff and I’m probably asexual so I probably won’t ever fuck.’

‘Sure,’ Arden said. ‘That’s fine.’

Efnisien twisted on the seat to face him, then grunted when his gut threatened to cramp. He pressed his hand over his liver. ‘What does that even mean? Are you asexual too?’

Arden stared at him, his eyes crinkled, then he slapped a hand over his mouth as he burst out laughing. He shakily put his bottle of juice down and kept laughing, and then he stood up and walked to the kitchen to get a paper towel, because he’d obviously spat juice all over his hand.

Efnisien stood and followed him into the kitchen.

‘Oh god,’ Arden wheezed. ‘Oh my god. I wish some of my friends had been there to hear _that._ No, baby, I’m a _slut.’_

Efnisien was staring at a photo on the fridge, and he looked at Arden over the word he’d used to describe himself – wasn’t that a bad word? – and then back to the photo.

‘You didn’t tell me you had a sister,’ Efnisien said.

Arden sucked in a breath and then made a strangled high-pitched sound that was clearly him trying to stifle a new wave of hysterical laughter. Efnisien’s cheeks burned.

‘Look closer, sweetheart,’ Arden said in a voice that wasn’t…like his normal voice. It was sultry and low.

Efnisien frowned at him, not liking being the butt of the joke at all. He _still_ hadn’t looked up what Ganymede meant beyond what he understood of it, because he hated being a punchline. He leaned closer to look at the photo. The girl could’ve been Arden’s twin. But her hair was really lush and big, and her makeup was really…extra.

‘Wait,’ Efnisien said, his mouth dropping open. ‘That’s… Is that…? Are you…?’

‘Miss Mercury Rising, babydoll,’ Arden purred, his voice changing _entirely,_ turning wholly feminine despite his deeper voice. Arden briefly struck a pose, one hand on his cocked hip, the other gracefully up in the air, fingers delicately splayed. And then Arden’s voice snapped back to its normal register _._ ‘But not for a long time. I haven’t done drag for a few years, but I still keep her around as a reminder, because man, that was _fun._ ’

_Babydoll._

Efnisien stood there feeling like a layer of skin was about to burn off his face. He didn’t even know what to _say._ A drag queen, Arden had been a drag queen. Efnisien turned and looked at the photo again. He looked at Arden. He had the face for it. He had that baby-face that’d work well in makeup, with a wig.

‘You’re doing my head in,’ Efnisien said weakly. ‘And you can’t call me that.’

‘Why? Because you hate it?’ Arden said. Efnisien knew Arden would never say it again if he asked him to. It was so weird to know that about Arden.

‘People don’t like being called things like that,’ Efnisien said.

Especially not people like him, who were monsters and deserved to be called far worse.

‘Do _you_ hate it?’ Arden said pointedly, like he was poking his finger into Efnisien’s chest, even from where he stood by the kitchen sink.

‘People-’

‘Okay, I’ll tell you what, you’re clearly not one hundred percent on that one, so how about we table it and we can talk about it some other time.’

‘But I don’t, I mean I don’t know if I…’

‘If you have to think about it this hard, it’s clearly complicated for you,’ Arden said. ‘That means we table it and talk about it later if it ever comes up again. I can still call you baby and sweetheart, right?’

Efnisien’s neck was burning. His _shoulders_ were.

He nodded and stared down at the tiles.

‘Good,’ Arden said warmly. ‘That’s great. Incidentally, before you got distracted admiring how great Miss Mercury looks, I wanted to follow up. Haaaa, how can I put this, I have a very non-monogamous lifestyle, and I kind of sleep with whoever I want, if they want to sleep with me. I’ve even been with ace people. Asexual people. Not that all of them like sex, of course, but some do. But anyway, my point is, I can flirt with you and not feel hard done by because you don’t fuck. That’s actually completely fine. You are _so_ not the first ace person I’ve ever met. Or flirted with, for that matter.’

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said.

‘Something tells me you weren’t really raised around any alternative lifestyles at all. Were your parent’s homophobes?’

Efnisien twitched, thinking of Lludd. He managed to keep the worst of the memories at bay – his brain had seemed tired after that session with Dr Gary anyway, it wasn’t making the memories like before, like it was just too exhausted to give a shit. That happened sometimes.

‘Uh, yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘Yes. That wasn’t really- It’s not good for the family reputation to be…’

‘You had to look and act a certain way,’ Arden said, picking up Efnisien’s hanging sentence. ‘You couldn’t even choose your clothing. And you said you used to be rich. That probably comes with its own pressures.’

‘It, uh,’ Efnisien said, then rolled his eyes at himself. ‘God. I miss talking in complete sentences.’

‘It’s okay, one day they’ll come back from the war. Probably with PTSD.’

Arden finished off wiping his mouth and walked back into the lounge, sitting down where he’d sat before. Efnisien followed him, looking towards the doors closed in the corridor. Isabelle was out there still, probably really upset. She’d looked really fluffy. She really had looked like a teddy bear, with her fur curly and close like that. Like one of his plush toys when he’d been a kid.

When Efnisien sat down again, he found himself looking at Arden’s bookshelves. There were a lot of fiction books, some non-fiction, and Efnisien saw books on BDSM on the bottom shelf. They didn’t spook him, maybe because he couldn’t see any covers.

‘I got diagnosed with PTSD actually,’ Efnisien said, laughing because he was so fucking _pathetic._ ‘Like, last week.’

‘Oh, shit,’ Arden said. ‘Well, that sucks.’

‘I dunno. I’m enjoying telling Dr Gary that I don’t have it.’

‘Do you think you don’t have it?’ Arden said, sounding genuinely curious.

Efnisien looked up at the ceiling. There was plaster moulding around the light. It looked fancy.

‘I think I’ve given it to people, so I don’t have it.’

‘Okay, bear with me, because I don’t want you to flip out on me. But like, remember when…I told you that horrible entire story about my past, and you kind of freaked out, but the story was about how Laurie was like, _traumatised,_ and then I don’t know, he kind of gave me PTSD? Remember that? Don’t remember it in too much detail or anything, but maybe just, do you see the parallel I’m trying to make?’

‘I’m doing a really good job of not seeing that,’ Efnisien deadpanned, looking at Arden sideling and squinting at him.

‘Are you fucking with me?’ Arden said. ‘Oh my god, you have such a wry sense of humour. Maybe you think you don’t have a right to PTSD.’

‘Maybe,’ Efnisien said, looking up at the ceiling again. ‘Maybe I do think that.’

‘Efnisien ap Wledig doesn’t believe he’s worth nice things,’ Arden said, like a television announcer, or a theatrical movie voiceover. And then his voice became normal again. ‘Well, god, no wonder you tried to run away from my place.’

Efnisien stared at him, surprised by Arden’s audacity, the cheeky gleam in his brown eyes, and then in spite of himself, he laughed.

‘For the record, PTSD isn’t nice at all,’ Arden said. ‘But _you_ know that, because you have it.’

‘People like me deserve some trauma,’ Efnisien said. ‘You know that.’

‘I used to think that,’ Arden said, putting his juice back on the table after drinking more of it. He kicked his boots off, one by one, and then drew his legs up onto the couch. His socks were neon pink and yellow. ‘Like, I really did. I had good reasons to think that way. But then I just kind of decided I didn’t like a world that lived constantly by Hammurabi’s Law, you know? Like what, because I wasn’t the monster _first,_ I get to be the monster _second?_ Surely we’ve moved on from the laws codified in 1754 BC in Mesopotamia.’

‘Humans are the same assholes they’ve always been.’

‘That they are,’ Arden said. ‘I don’t pretend to be able to change anyone’s behaviour except my own. Well. Okay in some circumstances another person might let me change their behaviour if I have their consent, but we’re not talking about that.’

Efnisien saw the acronym _BDSM_ hanging across his mind in neon pink and yellow.

‘Yeahhh,’ Efnisien drawled, facing Arden properly. ‘So like, the sex specialist told me that you’re a BDSM Youtuber and have your own channel and teach classes and like, basically, were you never gonna tell me?’

Arden stared at him, looking truly shocked, and then he blanched. ‘Who the hell was your sex specialist?’ His eyes widened _even more._ ‘Oh god, tell me it wasn’t Mika.’

Efnisien pressed his lips together, because now was the point where he was supposed to be flipping out, not the point where he wanted to laugh.

‘Sorry, man,’ Efnisien said.

‘This _fucking_ city,’ Arden said in exasperation. ‘ _No,_ I wasn’t going to tell you. At least, not until you felt safer about it. And it doesn’t have to have _anything_ to do with our friendship, okay?’

_That’s what Mika basically said you’d say._

‘Is it just friendship?’ Efnisien said.

‘I don’t know,’ Arden said, the shock disappearing into something warmer, something gently teasing. ‘Do you want it to be more?’

The question bloomed inside of him. It made him think of the way Arden touched him, and the way Arden asked him permission even before touching his injured thumb. It made him think of Arden breaking up the chocolate chip cookie for him, and encouraging him to eat. It made him think of Arden on the floor with him in the library, tearing up because Efnisien had asked if Arden had touched him without his consent. Arden at the beach, fingers in his jumper, pulling him close and hugging him so tightly that Efnisien felt anchored and realised that maybe he’d never felt anchored before.

Efnisien swallowed a whole mouthful of air with an ugly noise and a pang in his throat, and stared at the floral pattern on the couch.

‘Ah, _shit_ ,’ he said.


	17. Wants

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: Disordered eating, and grooming that creates disordered eating are mentioned here. Thoughts of animal cruelty from someone getting no joy from those thoughts, but no actual animal cruelty (and no detailed memories). Some descriptions of historical self-harm.
> 
> If you need me I am always...always...screaming in the pit about these two and this story asldkjfas

Efnisien didn’t know how to respond to Arden’s question. He didn’t even know what more than a friendship _meant._ And having Arden look at him with that much focus was disconcerting. The weight of Arden’s attention was heavy and direct, like Arden was leaning right into him even though he hadn’t moved closer at all.

‘Uh,’ Efnisien said.

‘How about,’ Arden said, ‘we don’t talk about it right now, okay? You’ve just arrived. You’ve had what might be called something adjacent to a panic attack. You’re looking calmer. So let’s…try and enjoy the next hour and see what happens? We already know we’re friends, right? So we’ll enjoy that!

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said, staring at him, feeling like he’d been given a reprieve. Arden smiled at him warmly, then reached for two remote controls next to the armrest.

‘You want to watch some TV?’ Arden said.

‘Uh, I don’t really… I mean you can pick what we watch.’

Efnisien didn’t own a television. He hadn’t watched television growing up. If he wanted to watch things, he could look them up on the internet. He frowned, thinking about it. He went to the opera with Crielle, and sometimes he went to symphonies on his own. When everyone talked about the latest shows they were into when he’d been at school, he was usually watching for an opening. But most of the time he was studying, or fantasising about hurting people while sitting in the library.

‘Nothing violent,’ Efnisien said quickly.

‘What about a cooking show?’

‘Cooking?’ Efnisien said, looking at Arden blankly.

‘Mmhm,’ Arden said. ‘Also, you seem like the kind of person to get bored easily, so I also have…’

He leaned over his armrest with a grunt, then pulled back holding a thing that looked like a giant multi-coloured plastic dice, except where the dots would usually be to indicate the numbers, there were metal buttons. One side had a swirl. Another had levers. Arden showed it to him, then pressed down a bunch of the buttons. They made sounds almost like the mechanical key switches in Efnisien’s keyboard.

‘Fidget dice,’ Arden said, handing it to Efnisien.

Efnisien took it, staring in confusion. Automatically, his fingers depressed some of the buttons and they clicked. He pressed them down again.

‘This isn’t going to annoy the absolute shit out of you?’ Efnisien said, his thumbs moving over the dice until he could feel the levers and move them back and forth. He didn’t know things like this existed. Toys just for fidgeting? People thought of fucking everything.

‘I see you’ve been treating yourself like a snack again,’ Arden said, and Efnisien looked at him in confusion, and then down to his thumb where Arden was looking.

‘Uh,’ Efnisien said, tucking his thumb away into his palm.

‘That’s some nervous habit. You always had it?’

‘Like, as a kid,’ Efnisien said, until Crielle trained him out of it. ‘And then like, the past three years. I guess. On and off.’

‘Do you bite your nails? Or just the skin?’ Arden said, surging up from the couch towards the kitchen again.

‘Skin,’ Efnisien said. ‘Mainly my thumb and index fingers. Sometimes it’s a bitch with transcribing.’

‘Oh, that’s what you do?’ Arden said, turning and looking at him. He opened a pantry door and came back out with a tackle box that seemed to be a much larger first aid kit than the one he had in the bookshop.

‘Yeah. I transcribe for like postgrads usually. It’s good. I have a really fast typing speed.’

_Shut the fuck up._

His fingers pressed down on the buttons on the dice, he felt all of the clicking through his knuckles.

‘Uh huh,’ Arden said, rummaging through the tackle box. ‘What does fast mean? Like a hundred words per minute? The average professional speed is like seventy five words per minute, isn’t it?’

‘How do you know that?’ Efnisien said, curious.

‘Good memory,’ Arden said, tapping his head. ‘But also, a few years ago I thought about doing data entry for about five seconds before I realised I’m the worst person to sit in an office.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘I can’t really see you doing an office job.’

‘Right?’ Arden said, whirling around and holding up two Band-Aids like a prize. ‘What a nightmare! Anyway, you didn’t tell me how fast you type.’

‘One hundred and seventy words per minute,’ Efnisien said.

Arden did a double take as he walked back over. He laughed. ‘Holy _shit,’_ he said. ‘You’ve got magic fingers.’

‘Nah,’ Efnisien said, though he felt like smiling. ‘A lot of it’s muscle memory. I used to play piano, like, a billion years ago.’

‘May I?’ Arden said, sitting on the couch and reaching for Efnisien’s hand without touching it.

Efnisien didn’t understand how Arden did this so easily. Didn’t understand how he still felt so flustered offering his hand over. Arden’s fingers were shorter than his, but they were dexterous. He took Efnisien’s hand and rested it on his knee, then opened an alcoholic wipe. He folded it and brushed it over the small wound at the corner of Efnisien’s thumb, and he tensed a little when it stung.

‘Shh, baby, should’ve done that the first time.’

‘I don’t do anything at all, so you don’t…have to do anything for this either, you know,’ Efnisien said.

He was baffled at his own response to the pain. There was a time in his life where he’d be bored in his room, casually nicking his own skin with a scalpel, then pressing different things from the kitchen into it to see what would happen. Jam gave him the worst infection. Salt hurt. Alcohol hurt. Citrus hurt. Sometimes he’d cut lemon pieces and smash them into the wounds he’d given himself, then he’d giggle at the way it felt.

He wanted to explain to Arden that the pain really didn’t bother him. That it was nothing at all. It was fun. But now that the sting was fading, he wanted the feeling of Arden’s fingers moving his thumb into the right position more.

Efnisien sometimes daydreamed in the hospital of finding a fruit basket and a small knife and cutting the fruit into thin slices and then feeding all of them into his abdomen to see what would happen.

_You’d die, idiot._

‘You have to look after these hands, if they’re what you use for your job,’ Arden said, carefully positioning the Band-Aid. ‘Shouldn’t take yourself for granted, baby.’

Efnisien stared at him, and then tried to decide if he could swallow silently, and realised he couldn’t. So he just sat there with saliva building up in his mouth feeling like a moron.

‘I do surveillance too,’ he said finally, swallowing at the end of the sentence like it was normal. ‘Just need my eyes for that.’

‘What kind of surveillance?’

‘Um, for a data company. I just stare at their feeds and report anything. Nothing’s happened so far except they have a rat problem. The pay is shit though.’

‘Transcription is better, huh? I imagine it would be, with a typing speed like yours.’

‘I get paid like four times as much for transcribing,’ Efnisien said.

‘So why not just do more transcribing?’ Arden said, looking up at him. ‘Unless you really love surveillance or something?’

Efnisien stared at him. Arden was already looking down at his thumb, putting the second Band-Aid over it. He gently smoothed down the ends of the Band-Aid, then carefully folded Efnisien’s thumb back towards his palm.

‘I don’t love surveillance,’ Efnisien said. ‘But…I signed up for like, five days a week with them.’

‘So?’ Arden said. ‘Can you get more transcription work? It wouldn’t be too hard on your hands, would it?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘I could probably do like another ten hours, I think. Maybe more.’

‘So ask to see if they’ve got the hours for you? I know a lot of people doing their doctorates can’t afford transcribers though. But maybe there’s more work out there?’

‘I mean, there is,’ Efnisien said. ‘It’s usually people who are already getting paid through the university, they teach and stuff. Dr Gary hooked me up with the first one, but there’ve been others. It’s all humanities. I wouldn’t mind getting into the hard sciences, but I thought humanities would be the worst and it’s not. At least so far.’

Efnisien paused and resisted the urge to look at Arden, staring down at hands in his lap.

‘The data company won’t be mad?’ Efnisien said. ‘If I pick up more hours transcribing and cut back with them?’

‘I doubt they’ll care,’ Arden said. ‘At most, it will cost them the hire of a replacement, but if it’s work you can do from home, a lot of people will sign up for it. You’re really worried that they’ll be angry with you?’

‘Stupid, right?’ Efnisien said, but he couldn’t quite make himself smile like he believed it was true. ‘I dunno. It’d never occurred to me to just do more transcribing. For more pay. It makes sense. I don’t think I have any business acumen.’

‘When I told the dojo I wasn’t going to be training for my fifth dan, I felt so guilty about it,’ Arden said, swinging his legs up onto the couch. ‘They had really high hopes for me, they were rooting for me, though I could end up one of the best in the country, you know. That’s a lot to shoulder. Sometimes it’s hard to decide to do the thing you need to do. Maybe for you it’s not transcription, that’s pretty hard on your hands, but if it pays so much more, you wouldn’t have to pick up the same amount of hours that you’re doing in surveillance for the same amount of pay. The only problem is those students graduate, so the work isn’t steady.’

‘Two of them have already said they’ll keep me if they become Associate Professors and stuff,’ Efnisien said. ‘There’s this one who has already said she wants to keep me on, and she does all this research into slurs.’

‘Slurs like fag?’ Arden said, side-eyeing him.

Efnisien tucked his chin towards his collarbones, then nodded.

‘Anyway,’ Efnisien said, clearing his throat, ‘she talks a lot about microaggressions, and she has a lot of cool research about it. I think she wants to turn it into a full curriculum or something. Like, on the evolution of slurs in the dominant paradigm and how they change in subcultures and stuff. And her notes are really easy to understand, her research is really clear. I’ve learned that like, a lot of them don’t have to be clear if they don’t want to be.’

Efnisien realised the book Gwyn had bought for him was like that. It was almost deliberately impenetrable, like the author didn’t want anyone to pass the litmus test of understanding it. Absently, his thumb spiralled on the lever on the plastic dice, and he watched his finger move. It was kind of mesmerising.

‘You want me to stop bringing it up?’ Arden said quietly. ‘I’ve been teasing you about the fact that you called me a fag, and yourself one, but maybe that joke’s had its day. What do you think?’

‘I was the one who said it.’

‘But I think you’ve been trying not to say it. Does it make you uncomfortable that I keep bringing it up?’

‘But I said it in the first place,’ Efnisien said, confused.

‘I know,’ Arden said. ‘I’m asking you if you _want_ me to keep teasing you about it, or if you _want_ me to just let it go. I can see that you don’t want to say it around me anymore.’

Efnisien didn’t want to answer the question. He’d said the word, so he’d blown the door open, it wasn’t like he got to close the door again. Arden could react however he wanted. It was a hate crime. That woman had gone on and on about how words like that destroyed people, they added up over time, they hurt people.

That was why Efnisien used them. And then…and then he didn’t want to use them anymore.

‘You can keep teasing me about it,’ Efnisien said finally.

‘I’m asking you what you want,’ Arden said insistently. ‘Not what you think I can do.’

‘Fuck,’ Efnisien said on a hard exhale. ‘You’re worse than Dr Gary.’

‘It’s a yes or no question, sweetheart,’ Arden said, his voice gentling. ‘Please tell me?’

It was hard to find a way around that tone of voice. It was hard not to respond when Arden said please like that. And unlike Dr Gary, Efnisien had a vested interest in _not_ walking out. He wanted to stay. He wanted to look at Arden’s stupid neon socks and he liked being in someone else’s house. He hadn’t been in someone else’s house since…

Well, shit, there was the family house where he was stabbed in the kitchen by Crielle, and then there was Hillview, and then there was his apartment.

‘I don’t really like it,’ Efnisien admitted, shaking his head at himself, at the situation. He hated how tight his chest felt. The same feeling he got whenever he could tell he was on a different track to Crielle, because he only ever learned he’d fucked up once he’d veered off the track in the first place.

‘So you don’t want me to tease you about it?’ Arden said, so softly he could’ve been talking to a pet.

‘Um,’ Efnisien said. ‘I guess…’ He hung in a space where the ellipsis became seconds, became a minute, and he stared ahead and thought that he’d put this entire fucking socialising thing in jeopardy because he couldn’t say a simple word. His heart beat fast. It was like Crielle was standing there in the room with him, smiling at him and waiting with that set look in her eyes. She never ever treated him like Gwyn, and she never ever would, but she was too good and perfect to be disobeyed. Sometimes Efnisien could be too wild and bad and awful for his own good, sometimes he was too harsh or feral or strange for her to understand. His evil was meant to be contained and classy, unless she wanted it to be crude.

But she wasn’t in the room, and Arden was sitting there next to him. When Efnisien looked over, Arden was running his finger along the remote control buttons in a fixed pattern, one line, then the next line, then the next. He didn’t even seem to realise he was doing it.

‘I guess, no,’ Efnisien said finally, hoping enough time had passed that Arden would have forgotten what they were even talking about.

Arden’s finger didn’t pause on the remote. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I know I was a pill about it, but you can tell me you don’t want me to do things, you know? I like it when people do that. It’s okay to commit to a clear answer. I’m probably better than some at responding to someone’s nonverbal cues, but when I pretend I’m a mind-reader, I fuck up. Anyway, ever baked anything before?’

‘No?’ Efnisien said.

‘Great, you’re going to learn so much useless information about baking and how nice British people can be when they’re helping each other bake.’

‘What?’

_‘Great British Bake Off,’_ Arden said, grinning as he stared at the television and went through a series of folders until he found what he was looking for and teed up the first episode.

Efnisien played with the fidget dice as the show started. It introduced amateur bakers from all around the United Kingdom. He was surprised they weren’t all models, and they weren’t all fake professionals, and they all came from different cultures.

‘I love Alvin,’ Arden said, still tracing his fingers over the remote.

‘Does he win?’ Efnisien asked.

‘Nah, he doesn’t win. I just really like the season 6 cast, they’re all great. Actually, I nearly forgot!’

Arden jumped up and practically bounced into the large kitchen, opening the cupboard and drawing out a container. He came back and opened it, setting it down between them, and Efnisien stared at the chocolate chip cookies and thought, maybe, he was actually going to fucking _die._

‘Please tell me I’m not watching a baking show and you baked cookies and like, planned this to be a thing.’

‘It’s hard for people to understand how great I am when they first meet me?’ Arden said, taking out one of the cookies and breaking it in half, offering the larger piece to Efnisien. ‘It’s like a really _cool_ onion, the layers reveal more and more greatness.’

‘You’re…’ Efnisien stared at the cookie, and stared at the show, and then stared at Arden.

‘It’s okay,’ Arden said, grinning and shoving about half of the giant piece of cookie into his mouth at once. ‘You’ll realise how great I am one day, and just accept it.’

His words were muffled around the cookie, and he burst into muffled laughter as crumbs dropped out of his mouth. He caught most of them, then brushed the rest off his shirt.

Efnisien by contrast, broke his half up into little pieces, and put one into his mouth and chewed without making any kind of mess.

Arden’s way of doing things seemed like way more fun.

They went back to watching the show. In the space of time it took for Efnisien to finish half of one cookie, Arden had eaten three chocolate chip cookies, casually reaching into the container and pulling them out like he was never afraid that the food was going to poison him. He was someone who’d never had to worry about it.

Efnisien had never been able to chill out and eat stuff with Gwyn. They could never share a packet of chips together, even if Gwyn bought them from the store himself, which he wouldn’t. Gwyn would never share food with anyone in that house. Even if Gwyn knew it wasn’t likely to be poisoned, he just _couldn’t._

Seeing Gwyn with more flesh on him, with more softness to his face, it was a strange kind of haunting relief. Sometimes when they were growing up, Efnisien daydreamed about watching Gwyn enjoying like a slice of cake or a chocolate bar or something, things that Efnisien had never seen happen, things that never happened.

Arden ate like he enjoyed everything, and Efnisien sat there and felt strange.

He made himself focus on the show.

He didn’t like Alvin as much as Arden, but he liked the anaesthetist Tamal, and he liked the way the show was set up, and he found the judging interesting. They had such specific metrics they judged food by. Efnisien thought about the things he ate at home and felt embarrassed.

He’d never really cared about food like these people did.

Crielle liked food to look good, but she’d never much cared about it otherwise. When they were growing up, she said it was important to watch how much he ate, and that if it tasted really good, it was probably bad for him. Even as a four year old and a five year old, if he got too excited about what he was eating, she would let him have a bite and then take it away and replace it with something else.

‘Food can look beautiful, but it’s also supposed to make _you_ look beautiful. The nicest tasting food will _not_ make you look beautiful, darling, and I couldn’t love you if you were ugly. Of course, you’re the prettiest boy I’ve ever seen! Don’t you want to stay pretty for me?’

Efnisien chewed on the inside of his lip and his hand hovered over the container of cookies. He wanted to eat another half. He was meant to have small meals anyway, his stomach hated him when he didn’t. Another half of a cookie couldn’t hurt, could it? 

Arden reached beneath Efnisien’s hand, picked out another cookie, broke it in half and shoved one of those halves into Efnisien’s palm.

‘There you go,’ Arden said. ‘Have as many as you want.’

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said. ‘No- I mean I don’t need… Uh. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ Arden said, teeing up the second episode.

The second episode was better, and Efnisien could see the way the narration was designed to slowly introduce all of the contestants, building up more details over each episode. Efnisien couldn’t help but think of them as characters, even though they were real people. They were being made into characters by the cameras and the studio, and they were aware of the cameras and performing some aspect of themselves. Efnisien hunted to hurt people. They were hunting to…

Was it hunting? Was it still hunting if they just wanted to get better at baking and maybe do well in a show? They all were kind to each other. Efnisien didn’t think it was fake. Either they were all really good at being sociopaths, or they were just that fucking stupid. They’d be so easy to hurt.

_Stop it._

He didn’t want to hurt them. He didn’t. They’d just be _easy_ to hurt. That was all. He didn’t actually want to hurt them. He was kind of rooting for Tamal.

‘Does Tamal do well?’ Efnisien asked, in spite of himself.

‘He does really well,’ Arden said, smiling. ‘He’s great, right?’

‘Mm.’

As they sat there and watched more – Efnisien pressing down the buttons on the dice and hoping that Arden wasn’t hating his guts for it – he thought of Isabelle outside, probably lying down and sad and lonely, because she wasn’t allowed in her own home because of some _stranger._ And she’d looked so soft, and her face had been nice, and her fur was different to the fur he was used to touching.

He didn’t have to hurt her. He didn’t even want to hurt her. The thoughts themselves scared him. He didn’t want to. Every time he tried to imagine hurting her, he felt awful. That meant he didn’t want to do it.

‘Arden,’ Efnisien said, his voice dry. ‘What kind of dog is Isabelle?’

‘She’s a golden retriever crossed with a standard poodle,’ Arden said, still watching the television. ‘It kind of kills me that she’s a designer breed, but her owner’s legit.’

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said. ‘Cool.’

Efnisien felt a rising agitation under his skin, in his body. He tried not to look at Arden, and he tried to concentrate on the show, but Isabelle was right outside. And Efnisien was the reason she couldn’t be inside. And he didn’t have to act on his thoughts. He didn’t have to act on them. Which meant…

Which meant…

‘Arden,’ Efnisien whispered.

‘Yeah?’ Arden said, and he was either oblivious to Efnisien’s weirdness, or he was really fucking good at pretending it was normal. Either way, Efnisien pressed his sweaty palm to the thigh of his jeans and his eyes closed.

‘Can you…?’

Ah, fucking _hell._

What was he even doing? Would Dr Gary say this was the stupidest fucking thing ever? Well, no, because he didn’t talk like that. But would he?

‘Could…?’

Nope, what a fucking fail.

_You’re a piece of shit._

The voice in his mind was scathing. Even Crielle didn’t say things like that to him. She would never say something like that to anyone. That was the way Efnisien talked. He shifted a little on the couch and refused to look at Arden and he thought that he was going to fizzle away into nothing.

‘Isabelle…’ he said. ‘Could you…?’

_Finish a fucking sentence, shit-for-brains!_

‘Do you want me to bring her inside?’ Arden said.

God. Efnisien looked over at Arden, and Arden’s expression softened, and it was already soft. His face was always kind of soft and nice.

‘Yeah?’ Arden said, like Efnisien had replied. ‘Do you want to try meeting her?’

Efnisien nodded mutely. He knew his eyes were wide and that he was being stupid and he wanted to apologise.

‘Do you just want to try her being in the room with us and seeing what it’s like?’ Arden said.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. His voice croaked. ‘I know it’s dumb.’

‘It’s not dumb,’ Arden said, smiling. ‘I’ll go get her.’

Arden paused the show, and then walked into the kitchen and reached for a collar and lead. The collar was pink, and the leash was pink leather with pictures of sunflowers all over it. And then Arden was gone and the doors were opening and he could hear Arden talking to her, and then he could hear panting and those paws on the rugs in the hall and then she was there, staring at Efnisien and wiggling in delight.

_Oh fuck. Oh god._

He looked down. He couldn’t even look at her.

He remembered once watching some bullshit true-crime thing which had turned him off the whole show, about how dogs could tell who the real monsters were. Dogs were psychic about monsters or something. He’d clicked out of the tab so fucking fast. Because surely if they knew, they’d see Efnisien coming from a mile away?

‘I’m going to have her on the lead,’ Arden said. ‘Isabelle, _gentle.’_

‘What does that mean?’ Efnisien said. Anything to distract himself from what was happening.

‘It means she has to wait for you to make the first move,’ Arden said, sitting down on the couch. She sat down on the other side of him, further away from Efnisien, and then she pushed her face into Arden’s hand and rubbed her ears into his palm. Arden scratched them easily and gently, smiling down at her. ‘She’s fine. She’s settled down a lot anyway. I mean she’s well-trained but she’s still a pogo stick when I get home. She’s a pogo stick when I go to get the mail and she can _see me_ getting the mail, and then I walk back down the driveway and there she is bouncing like a little maniac.’

‘She’s not little,’ Efnisien rasped.

‘She is to me,’ Arden said, ruffling her ears easily. ‘You want to keep watching?’

Efnisien shook his head.

‘Do you feel like you’re going to hurt her?’ Arden asked.

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘But I _could.’_

‘So could I,’ Arden said.

‘No, but you _haven’t_ ,’ Efnisien said. ‘You never have. So you don’t know. Not really. Anyone could do anything, but that’s kind of…’

‘It’s not what you meant,’ Arden said. ‘You mean that you’ve done it before, so you’re aware that you have that potential in a way that most people aren’t aware of.’

Efnisien nodded, and then he dug his fingers into the back of his neck. His abdomen was pounding. Just one big whole body gut-throb.

‘Do you want to hurt her?’ Arden said.

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘No. She looks really soft.’

‘She’s probably not as soft as she looks. Do you want to try touching her?’

Efnisien was going to die. His whole body was going to implode and then he’d ooze in a pile of bones and blood through the couch and onto the floor. He wanted to scream that no one should be letting him do this, ever. He wanted to run to Dr Gary and shake him and ask him how anyone could let him out of Hillview in the first place. Why didn’t anyone just put him in jail where he belonged?

‘Y-yeah,’ Efnisien said, his voice shaking.

‘All right,’ Arden said.

‘Arden, don’t you feel like you’re putting your dog in danger?’

‘No,’ Arden said steadily.

‘Don’t you feel like that’s stupid maybe?’

‘No,’ Arden said. ‘I believe that you’re in control of your actions, and you’ve shown yourself to be considerate and cooperative and you listen to others. Maybe you don’t listen to everyone, but you listen to me. You’re not a robot responding to a computer in your brain, you’re a person who doesn’t want to hurt my dog, who maybe hasn’t had the chance to meet any dogs in a while.’

‘I could be lying,’ Efnisien said.

‘Efnisien, if you wanted to hurt dogs that badly, you’d probably just be out there doing that, instead of watching _Great British Bake Off_ with me. If this is you grooming me into some kind of torture scene, you’re really bad at it.’ Arden laughed. ‘I’m a terrible target. Pick someone weaker.’

_Normally I would._

Arden moved Isabelle with soft-spoken words, until Isabelle was sitting in front of Efnisien, staring up at him. And Arden was sitting right there next to Efnisien, he’d moved the container so that he could come closer and everything. Their sides were touching. It wasn’t doing much to help Efnisien with the sensation that he was going to evaporate into nothing.

‘Give me your hand,’ Arden said, holding out his hand.

Isabelle tried to put her large, golden paw into it, and Arden laughed softly, nudging her paw away. ‘No, Bella, I didn’t ask for that. Be good.’

Isabelle put her leg down and sat there like she hadn’t moved. Arden held out his hand again, and Efnisien rested the back of his hand in it. He watched as Arden’s fingers curled around his. Arden’s hand was warmer than his, his fingers weren’t sweaty, and his fingertips were manicured and neat.

‘You’re shaking,’ Arden said, but his voice had changed, like he was almost talking to himself. ‘Efnisien, you don’t have to do this today. You don’t owe that to me, or to Isabelle. Just the fact that you’re willing to try is a big deal, but you don’t have to go through with this.’

‘It’s fine,’ Efnisien said. Arden waited like he was making sure Efnisien wouldn’t say anything else, but if Efnisien backed out now he was probably never going to do this again.

‘All right then. We’re just going to do a little, okay, and then that will be it for today.’

Efnisien nodded. He watched, his heart pounding hard in what felt like his _throat_ as Arden moved Efnisien’s hand so that it was palm down, and gently offered it to Isabelle. Efnisien felt the shock of a cold nose on his fingertips, smearing across the side of his hand, and she didn’t even lick him. And Efnisien thought of some of the things he’d done in the past, and he was cold all over, and thought there was no way he should be allowed to do this.

Arden was stupid. Everyone was _stupid._

And then his hand was resting on top of her head and she was panting with her mouth open, her eyes looked pleased, and she was looking over to Arden as though checking something. Her fur was crinkly and curly and springy.

‘That’s good,’ Arden said. ‘Gentle, Isabelle.’

‘It’s not that soft,’ Efnisien said, barely moving his fingers. He didn’t want to move his hand at all, in case he just fisted up a handful of her fur and yanked really hard. He didn’t trust himself at all. Arden’s hand on his made him feel safer, but he could still do it.

But even now, it’d be easy. He could yank his hand out of Arden’s, he could… he could…

‘Her ears are a lot softer,’ Arden said, moving Efnisien’s hand. ‘See?’

And then Efnisien’s fingers were pressing into the velvety softness of her floppy ears, and she shoved her head into his palm, and Efnisien scratched them in spite of himself, as gently as he could.

Abruptly, he realised he was going to cry and he yanked his hand back, and Arden let go, because Arden had never held his hand in a tight grip at all. Efnisien looked away and willed his body to stop doing whatever the fuck it was doing and to stop feeling whatever the fuck it was feeling. He didn’t know what the hell was going on.

‘Good girl, Isabelle,’ Arden said, and Efnisien could tell from the way he was moving, that he was scratching and petting her head. ‘Go lie down on your rug. Go on. That’s good. Good girl.’

Isabelle trotted into the kitchen and laid down on the rug, and Efnisien’s mouth was open as he tried to breathe silently. He refused to look at Arden. But at least he wasn’t crying.

‘Hey,’ Arden said, and then Efnisien felt a hand resting over the fist he had pushed down into his thigh. ‘You did good too, Ef. You doing okay?’

Efnisien made himself nod.

‘I didn’t hurt her,’ he said.

What left him paralysed there in the chair, was the sick realisation that he was having all over again – because it wasn’t like this was the first time – that he didn’t think he’d ever really wanted to hurt them. But he had, and he’d taught himself to enjoy it, and so he’d enjoyed it.

But he liked dogs. He didn’t understand them. And they were easy to hurt. But he liked them all the same.

‘You didn’t,’ Arden said. ‘You didn’t even want to, did you?’

Efnisien shook his head.

‘You want to watch some more TV?’ Arden said softly.

Efnisien reached for his glass of water and drank half of it at once to have something to do. He could hear the way he drank, messy swallows and gulps, and he breathed afterwards like he was catching his breath.

‘Hey, Ef, you want to hear something really sexy?’ Arden said, his voice a little teasing. Efnisien looked over in spite of himself, and Arden grinned. ‘You want to give me a number between one and ten?’

Efnisien stared at him, and then he laughed so hard he surprised himself, the sound bursting out of him. He placed a hand over his mouth as he finished laughing, and Arden winked at him and drank some of his juice and turned the show back on. When Efnisien lowered his hand, he had no idea what number he was, but it was definitely lower than before.

‘Here,’ Arden said, leaning back into the chair. ‘Nadiya’s about to fuck up yet another technical, before she becomes literally the best ever at them.’

‘What?’ Efnisien said.

‘Just watch, sweetheart,’ Arden cooed. ‘Mat’s going to make a really great gingerbread fire engine soon.’

Efnisien looked over at Isabelle. She was already lying down and looking like she was close to sleeping. After all of that, she wasn’t even bothered. She was relaxed.

Efnisien dared to lean back into the couch, and he looked over at Arden once, feeling relieved when Arden just smiled and kept watching the show. Efnisien picked up the fidget dice with stiff, sweaty fingers and played quietly with the levers. In spite of himself he started to care way too much about the bakers. He stopped thinking about how the world was supposed to end because he petted a dog, and it was really nice.


	18. Cards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hhhhhhhh this fic just sakljfdslakfsa look *presses face into the ground* *screams*

After the second episode of _Great British Bake Off_ , Arden put the television on mute and paused the next episode just before it started playing. Efnisien absently clicked buttons on the fidget dice and wondered if it was time for him to go home.

‘Can I ask you something?’ Arden said.

‘You might not get an answer, but you can ask whatever you want,’ Efnisien said, wondering if now was the right time to feel terrified.

‘Your Pure O, it’s…complicated, right? More complicated than the average diagnosis?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said heavily. ‘It fucking is. Honestly I argued with them about it for ages because I didn’t fit some of the criteria, or I didn’t think I did, but apparently being like, obsessed about _not_ having it and trying to find a reason not to have it is also kind of part of my expression of the disorder. I get obsessed about people mislabelling me and it putting them in bad situations. Dr Gary would kill to hear me say that, so I’m never gonna say it to him, but that’s... And also Dr Gary like – you know – gave me the PTSD diagnosis, and I guess I might have other stuff. It’s stupid.’

‘Mental health stuff is rarely smart,’ Arden said, shifting on the chair so that he was leaning back against the armrest and facing Efnisien directly, his expression open. ‘Do you have many techniques for managing the Pure O?’

‘You really want to talk about this?’ Efnisien said.

‘Yeah, I do. I mean, I saw how upset you got in Cosy, and I guess I’d like to know more about it.’

‘If you’re looking for a cheat-sheet, I don’t have one,’ Efnisien said, laughing. ‘But, ah, with techniques and stuff… Honestly, I can’t use a ton of them. We tried a lot. I can’t even use the main technique, which is ERP, or Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy. Dr Gary tried EMDR a few times, which is-’

‘Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing,’ Arden said, grinning swiftly. ‘Done that one myself. I was lucky enough that it helped me a lot. Didn’t help you?’

‘Made me nearly kill myself in Hillview,’ Efnisien said, laughing, ignoring the way Arden just stared at him in horror. ‘EFT did the same, you know, that tapping bullshit. I looked it up because it was so bad for me, because I thought it made everyone feel like doing themselves in, but it mostly helps people so like, fucking bummer.’

‘I didn’t even know they used that in therapy, I thought that was a new age thing.’

‘Oh it is,’ Efnisien said, ‘it’s pseudoscience, but the placebo effect is often so good that it still _works._ And Dr Gary doesn’t rule out shit like that. So we tried it. The systematic reviews have been positive anyway. It’s not total bullshit. But kind of total bullshit for me.’

‘What else have you tried?’

‘Um. Schema therapy. Didn’t work out. Found it boring as fuck. And then um, oh god, management techniques like Dr H- Uh, one of my other doctors, used to get me to hum a song or something during intrusive thoughts. Firstly, when the intrusive thoughts are bad enough I’m basically not that conscious I _can’t._ Secondly, humming the song just made me _hate the fucking music._ And now I can’t listen to Chopin anymore. Dr Gary later said I make referred triggers really easily. So now Chopin triggers intrusive thoughts.’

‘Literally the opposite of what you were going for,’ Arden said drily.

‘Yeah, the complete opposite. It’s why association techniques are for shit, basically, if I’m using them. As soon as I try and focus on one thing for my intrusive thoughts, that thing becomes a door to more of them. And then, like, Dr Gary tried to get me to like, do times tables in my head. And I got all the way to my 15 times tables and was like when do I stop? The thoughts just keep going.’

‘You weren’t lying about being good at maths, huh?’

‘Numbers, man,’ Efnisien said. ‘So then I started reciting paragraphs to myself verbatim from things I’d read, it doesn’t stop shit. It’s like there’s the linguistic and numbers part of my brain, and then the intrusive thoughts part of my brain, and they don’t have _anything_ to do with each other.’

‘So what does work?’

‘Bilateral stuff,’ Efnisien said. ‘Sort of a cousin to EMDR but not as invasive, but I can’t do the exercises much. Dr Gary has to be really careful when he pulls that out, and I have to be in the right state of mind, because otherwise it turns to shit. Uh, focusing on things I can see, hear and touch. Dr Gary uses a five, four, three method. I think that works because I focus on different things every time, so nothing can become a referred trigger. Sometimes just sensory cues, like he’ll snap his fingers to get my attention. I dunno if that’s a technique or just something he started doing. And um, we started a new technique recently that’s really body based.’

‘Oh,’ Arden said, sounding so curious that Efnisien almost wanted to introduce him to Dr Gary and tell them both to have a field day. ‘So you sort of need things that bypass cognitive techniques?’

Efnisien blinked. He’d never really thought of it that way before. But maybe it was true.

‘Mmhm, I think. At least sometimes. I hate them, honestly. The bilateral stuff and whatever we did a couple of sessions ago, it’s really hard, but it seems to work. But I don’t use those to really handle a fixation in the moment. We’re really limited on that. But what we have, it seems to work and it’s been working better over the last two years.’

‘That’s really good.’

‘Is it?’ Efnisien said, smiling bitterly. ‘Cuz if I was better at therapy, maybe all the other techniques would’ve worked.’

‘You trying to win at therapy there, overachiever?’ Arden said, grinning at him. ‘Trying to do the equivalent of one hundred and seventy words a minute in a session?’

‘Fuck you,’ Efnisien said, but he smiled a little, because maybe he was trying to do that sometimes.

‘The thing is,’ Arden said, ‘I…like hanging out with you. Today’s been a lot of fun. But I guess I am looking for a cheat-sheet, because I feel like the more we get to know each other, the more I might need one. You make it sound like the fixating and the…episodes, are kind of normal? But I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want to push you too hard.’

‘You’re into BDSM. You want to hurt people,’ Efnisien said flatly.

Arden’s face screwed up in frustration, he looked aside and took a slow breath. ‘A _lot_ of people in that world don’t want to hurt people and they don’t want to be hurt. I _am_ a sadist, but it’s selective, and it’s controlled. Efnisien, I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘Sure,’ Efnisien said, shoving one of his hands under his thigh and looking down at the couch. ‘You have BDSM books on that shelf, and you’re flirting with me which means you probably want to hurt me.’

Arden rolled dramatically off the couch onto the floor, then sprang upright so fluidly it looked like a practiced move. He took several steps towards the kitchen and when he turned back, he looked like he wasn’t having a great day.

‘Should I go?’ Efnisien said.

‘No,’ Arden said. ‘I’m trying to think. Give me a second.’

‘Okay.’

Efnisien reached for the water and drank more of it and kept holding the glass. He stared down at the thumb with its two Band-Aids, carefully placed, one after the other. Arden did it so precisely. Even the people in the hospital hadn’t seemed to care that much about the dressings on his wounds. They looked after them, but they weren’t _precise_ about it.

‘I really want to be able to talk to you about this,’ Arden said, raking a hand through his hair several times, ‘but I really don’t want to freak you out. And the way that you _think_ about it, predisposes you to freaking out about it. You talked to Mika, didn’t you? Did that help?’

‘I mean he basically told me it’s all fine and normal and consensual and et cetera and then I kind of went catatonic and he had to leave.’

‘Right! Yes, well that’s kind of what I mean! And I could happily never talk to you about it again, but you brought it up, sweetheart, and you brought it up again today. I can talk _around_ it, I can talk about my needs and what I want, and in the background you’re probably secretly thinking I’m a serial killer.’

‘I mean a nice serial killer,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘Do you seriously think I’m a serial killer?’ Arden said sharply. ‘Or is that an intrusive thought?’

‘I don’t know!’ Efnisien said, feeling cornered even though Arden had walked out of the lounge. ‘I think you’re nice! But that doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Why?’ Arden said.

‘Because…’ Efnisien looked down at the Band-Aids. ‘Because people like John Wayne Gacy…’

He swallowed roughly. He did _not_ want to start thinking about this.

‘Because _people_ are nice when they want things from you,’ he said finally.

‘Are you nice to me because you want things from me?’ Arden said.

‘I’m not nice to you,’ Efnisien said in horror, staring up at him. ‘Are you fucking kidding me? I’m rude as shit. When have I ever been nice to you?’

‘You’re polite and communicative and cooperative, you’re always very aware of the space you take up around other people, and check in frequently to see if you’re still welcome. You frequently remind people – or at least me – that you don’t have to be there, and you’ve given me plenty of outs from the beginning, in case I found anything about you difficult.’

‘You- But…’ Efnisien’s jaw felt tight.

Arden took a step forwards, another step, and then he was right there on the couch again, facing Efnisien.

‘I was there, Ef,’ Arden said. ‘I was there when you listened to my crappy story that I had to tell you all at once or I’d never have said it, and I was there when you were compassionate about it in response. You’re more than nice, Efnisien. Nice is an insipid word to describe you.’

‘Sweet fucking Jesus,’ Efnisien said, squeezing the glass so hard he had to put it down again. What Arden was saying made him feel like he’d set up a terrible trap, and in the past this would’ve been the perfect time to spring it, the perfect time to twist the knife.

‘Do you really think I’m a serial killer?’ Arden said, staring at him intently.

‘I think…’ Efnisien’s hands wrung together, and he could tell Arden was watching the movements. He shoved both of his hands beneath his thighs and it made his thumb throb. God he was tense all over again. He’d been starting to get into the dumb fucking show. ‘I think…’

‘Tell me,’ Arden prompted.

‘I think you’re nice to me and I don’t trust that.’

‘Okay, but do you think I’m a serial killer? I’m not asking if you’ve fixated on it, or had irrational thoughts about it. Do you– do _you_ think I’m…I’m like those people you think about?’

_That’s something a serial killer would say._

Being put on the spot made it all so fraught. What if Efnisien said no, because he really didn’t think Arden was one, but then Arden turned out to be one? Efnisien would look like the biggest idiot, and he wouldn’t be able to get away because he would’ve given too much trust to the wrong person.

‘Do you think everyone who’s nice to you is a serial killer?’ Arden said finally.

‘I thought Dr Gary was a rapist for like a year,’ Efnisien said flatly.

‘What about other people who are nice to you?’

_What other fucking people?_

Efnisien shrugged. ‘My cousin tried to beat me to death but he’s pretty nice otherwise. And honestly I one hundred percent deserved it, like, trust me.’

Arden made a strange noise in his throat and when Efnisien looked over, he saw that blank emptiness that he hadn’t seen since Arden had shared his story about Laurie _._ Efnisien had come to think of it as the ‘Laurie face’ and he didn’t know why Arden was making that expression now.

‘What about other people?’ Arden said

_‘What_ other fucking people?’ Efnisien said, his voice rising. Isabelle looked up, and Efnisien sucked down a breath and looked away and told himself to calm the fuck down. If Isabelle came over, he was going to bolt. ‘What the fuck do you think my social circle is? All those other animal abusers and killers I hang out with? Or the people I hurt? Or the ones who think people like me should be castrated or killed or tortured or made to go through everything we’ve inflicted on others and more besides? Who are these people who are supposed to be nice to me?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Arden said.

‘Don’t be,’ Efnisien said, pressing his lips together. ‘Just, I don’t know what you want from me. If we can’t be friends because sometimes I think you’re going to do bad things to me, then we can’t be friends. It’s not like I blame you, because it doesn’t sound like a fun time for you either.’

Arden sighed and pulled his legs up onto the couch, then pulled one of his knees up towards his chest. He bent over the armrest and pulled up a green, velvet cushion with gold buttons and shoved it between his back and the couch.

‘I like being your friend,’ Arden said. ‘Okay, I’m going to try a different way of talking about this. And I’m going to table the whole thing about how I’m _worried_ that you have no one in your life, but I saw your phone contacts so I guess I already knew that. I’m going to…talk about something else.’

‘Or you could kick me out and not have to try so hard,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘Baby,’ Arden practically cooed, in such a warm voice that Efnisien looked at him. Arden was smiling, his eyes were gleaming. ‘Baby, you don’t have to do that. Maybe I like trying for you.’

_Fuck._

Efnisien swallowed roughly and decided to shut up and then shook his head a little so that his hair covered his burning ears.

‘I like you as a friend,’ Arden said, ‘but I’m also curious to see what else there is between us. I’m going to tell you what I’ve liked so far out of the things we’ve done, and you can tell me if you’ve hated or liked those things too, okay? Let’s drop serial killers for now. You remember that signal you had in the car to get me to shut up?’

Efnisien raised his index finger.

‘Great,’ Arden said. ‘Perfect. _Use_ it if you need me to shut up. Um, so. So far I’ve liked talking with you. Have you liked that?’

Efnisien nodded. He liked that a lot, actually. Arden talked to him like he was a person worth talking to, and Efnisien wasn’t paying him to stick around, unlike Dr Gary.

‘I like the way I can talk to you about different subjects,’ Arden said. ‘Whether they’re light or heavy. Obviously there’s some no-go zones, but there are for me too. You’ve never made me feel unsafe as a result of opening up to you.’

_Gay,_ Efnisien thought. But also, he sat there wondering how Arden was using those words to describe _him._ Because Efnisien had never been a safe person. He wasn’t even trying to be a safe person. He didn’t really want to hurt people anymore, except for when he thought he did want to, and he didn’t _really_ want to even then. But he’d never been safe. What he’d done in the past meant he’d never be a safe person.

‘Outside of your normal amount of not feeling safe around others, do you feel safe around me?’ Arden asked. ‘You’ve opened up about bits and pieces here and there, did that feel okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘Don’t you think it’s really…weird to talk about things like this?’

‘What? Like…honestly?’ Arden said. ‘Openly?’

‘Maybe,’ Efnisien said.

‘Well, I might not use the same approach with some of the other people in my life, but I’m going for extra-transparent with you, so that you can see my cards before I lay them on the table. But in general, I like honesty and I like openness. They’re good for the soul.’

Efnisien couldn’t think of anything to say. He kind of liked those things too. He didn’t know if he liked them at moments like this, when he couldn’t tell exactly what was happening and felt like maybe he was going to lose his friendship with Arden somehow. But overall, Dr Gary had long ago taught him the value of being honest. Even when Efnisien didn’t want to tell the truth, he knew that things got better when he did.

‘But there are other things I’ve really liked,’ Arden said, ‘and they’re things I might want to do more, or in different ways. And those things are a grey area between friendship and other kinds of connection. Do you want to hear them?’

Efnisien forced himself to lean hard against the couch, feeling like he needed the support. He wanted to bring his legs up onto the couch cushion, but he wouldn’t let his shoes touch it. Efnisien had wanted to take his sneakers off at the threshold when they’d entered, but Arden hadn’t taken his off until he’d sat down, so now Efnisien didn’t know if it was okay to take them off. Also his socks had holes in them.

‘You can tell me,’ Efnisien said, then made himself nod. ‘Like, I want to hear them.’

_God, I hope I do._

‘Okay, great,’ Arden said. ‘I really like hugging you. A lot. I would do that every time I saw you, and every time you left, and probably at other times too. I could always ask your permission, or I could just do it and if you didn’t feel like it on the day you could shake your head or tell me no. But I like that. You feel good in my arms.’

Efnisien was pretty sure he’d forgotten he had most of his senses, because _who the fuck talked like that?_ But also, getting confirmation that Arden liked those hugs made something bubble up and swing around inside of him, a wild, strange clamouring. It was hard not to double check that Arden wasn’t lying to him.

_Are you sure you want to hug me more? Really? You’d just do it? Even if there wasn’t a reason like me crying or some shit?_

‘I like that you let me look after you,’ Arden said. ‘I don’t like when you’re hurt, sweetheart, but I like that you let me use the Band-Aids, or you let me bring you food when you need it. You let me pay for the meal the other night, as well. I kind of have a thing for taking care of people, and being allowed to do that is something that comes naturally whether it’s strangers, friends, or lovers. But with you, I want to do it more.’

‘Like how?’ Efnisien said, his voice breaking. Arden thankfully didn’t comment on it and tell Efnisien he was a giant idiot.

‘Sometimes I might want to ask you if you’ve eaten anything that day, or make sure you eat something while we hang out,’ Arden said speculatively. ‘Or I’d like to be the one that picks you up and drops you off back home when we catch up. I don’t want you to catch public transport if you don’t have to, if we’re seeing each other. I like to be able to pay for people’s meals, but I’m really aware that can make other people uncomfortable. None of these are things I _have_ to do, they’re things I like doing that I’d like to do more specifically with you.’

‘Oh.’

What else could he say? Efnisien was having a hard time trying to wrap his mind around the fact that things could get better, probably, and all he’d need to do was agree to it. It scared the shit out of him.

‘The thing you need to be aware of,’ Arden said, ‘is that for me, some of this is about power. I don’t want to lie to you about that, or pretend that all of the things I want are just vanilla friendship things, when I get to enjoy not just looking after you, but also having a measure of power over how you’re taking care of yourself, or how much care you let me express in this thing we have. You kind of give off a vibe that…maybe it wouldn’t be bad for you either. But because it’s about power, we have to talk about it.’

‘Do you…want to do other things as well?’ Efnisien said. ‘More than what you’ve said?’

‘Efnisien, if you let me, we would already be in a relationship of some kind,’ Arden said. ‘And it’s kind of hard admitting that because I’m not usually super invested with some of the people I meet. It’s like, ridiculously easy for me to find dates, for me to find hook ups, and for me to find partners. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the greatness onion, I’m pretty irresistible. And also, frankly, the ratio of Doms to subs is _wildly_ unbalanced so it’s probably _mostly_ that.’

‘But with no sex,’ Efnisien said. ‘Because you said we didn’t have to do that.’

‘We don’t _ever_ have to do that,’ Arden said. ‘I mean, fuck, we don’t have to do any of it! In this case, my wants aren’t expectations. They’re just…things I’ve thought about that seem like maybe we’d both enjoy doing them, and at the very least, I really would. But since you’re not used to friendship, or being touched by people, even what we’ve done is really charged for you. I can tell it is. So…hence…I’m going the verbal essay route because I don’t want to mess up our friendship.’

Efnisien was pretty sure it was the first time he’d ever heard someone use the word ‘hence’ in a conversation before. Arden made it sound natural. Efnisien sat there, easing his hands out from under his thighs. His heart was still racing. Arden was suggesting things that didn’t only sound great, but were also beyond what Efnisien could have imagined. He didn’t care as much about Arden paying for things, but the hugging, and…all of it, he didn’t understand why anyone would want to do that with someone like him.

‘What about the BDSM stuff?’ Efnisien said finally.

‘You kind of want to know about it, don’t you?’ Arden said.

‘I mean, it freaks me out. But it won’t…leave me alone. So maybe I just want to understand it better. You make it sound like it’s already kind of happening. And I don’t get how that’s possible, because it’s not like there’s been ropes or anything.’

‘For some people it’s purely psychological,’ Arden said quietly. ‘Look, I can…teach you more about that world, but I’m going to have a few requests if I do.’

‘Like what?’ Efnisien said, looking up, forehead furrowing.

‘Like, I don’t want you to google my YouTube page, and I don’t want you to watch any of those videos without me. I use a lot of the tools that can freak newcomers out, and I know how to use them safely and responsibly, but I don’t want you watching that, unsupervised, and coming to your own ill-informed conclusions. I have a BDSM 101 playlist, but it’s still not how I’d introduce you to the subject.’

‘So how would you?’

‘Like this,’ Arden said, after swallowing. ‘By explaining that I like to have the power to take care of people in certain relationships, and asking you if you might want to be taken care of a bit more, and letting you know what that would look like.’

‘But…’ Efnisien was flailing. ‘That’s… I like those things too.’

‘Yeah,’ Arden said, leaning his head against the back of the couch and smiling. ‘Thought you did. Which is also why I really want to make sure you don’t spook yourself too badly, because I think it could be good for you. A little. Maybe. And if I’m wrong, you can tell me. And if you can’t tell me, you can use the signal. I’d probably give you other signals too, not because I won’t ever listen if you tell me you don’t like something, but because you don’t really do ‘talking about your feelings’ in a way I think I can trust yet.’

Efnisien frowned. He wanted to be trustworthy. And he tried to think of how to say that it was fine, that he could talk about those things, and then Arden reached out and brushed his fingers briefly over Efnisien’s hand.

‘It’s not bad,’ Arden said. ‘It just means we need to find loopholes.’

‘I mean, you know way more about this stuff than I do.’

‘I do,’ Arden said. ‘But you know more about _you_ than I do, and that’s important too.’

‘I like- I like everything you’ve said so far,’ Efnisien said, his cheeks flushing so hard that his eyes felt like they were heating up. ‘But it feels like I’m just…using you.’

‘Aside from the fact that I like your company, and I like taking care of people, and specifically _you_ , it also means I get to kind of direct the flow of how things go. That’s something I get out of it, and that’s very selfish of me. I couldn’t be friends with someone more controlling than I was, at least, not beyond like acquaintances. Stuff with Laurie… I don’t love when other people touch me without my permission, and if you and I ever go further, we’ll need to talk about that, because I have some pretty strict boundaries. I don’t like the feeling of someone always paying for me, or driving me places. I need to feel like I’m strong enough to take care of myself _and_ the other person in a connection, and as soon as I feel kind of…’

The silence between them stretched, and Arden looked like he had no idea how he wanted to say what he’d been going to say.

‘I think I get it,’ Efnisien said, when Arden didn’t finish. He didn’t know how he felt about the fact that Arden still had things he couldn’t handle because of Laurie. It made sense, but Arden always seemed like he was kind of in control of his life.

Probably because that was how he liked to come across.

And if Efnisien was a younger version of himself, he’d so want to touch Arden without his permission, or jump him from behind, or grope him, just to see what would happen. Just to see the look of betrayed shock on Arden’s face. The realisation was strange and awful and dislocating. Efnisien couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

The idea of hurting Arden now made him cringe, like all his organs shrank away at the thought. Even his lungs contracted.

He didn’t want Arden to tell him things like this, he didn’t want to hear them, because what if he suddenly decided hurting people was great again? Arden made it seem like he could fight off anyone, but he’d shown his back to Efnisien in the kitchen. Even if Arden threw him off after, Efnisien could frighten him or hurt him first.

‘You shouldn’t tell me how to hurt you,’ Efnisien said.

‘Do you want to hurt me?’ Arden said.

Efnisien shook his head vigorously. Arden shrugged like that was the answer, then reached for the container of cookies and drew out another one. He broke it into uneven quarters and handed Efnisien one of the larger pieces. It had a ridiculous amount of chocolate chips in it.

Efnisien nibbled at it, and thought everything over. He didn’t know what to say.

‘There’s other things,’ Arden said, an entire quarter of a large cookie in his mouth already. He chewed and swallowed quickly. ‘Things that are very specific that I’d like, with you. That night at the beach, when you bowed your head before me and let me place my hands over your ears to warm them. Things that…are sort of like that, physically.’

Efnisien handed his quarter of the cookie back to Arden, because no way could he eat during a conversation like this. He still sometimes thought about that time, about Arden’s hands warm over his ears, about Arden’s fingers positioning his head with the softest touches. He could still hear the sound of his own hair moving, could still feel the acute sense of his own vulnerability, and yet there was something profound in Arden doing what he’d done.

‘Like…what?’ Efnisien said.

‘Well. Probably the tamest thing would be something like today I imagined it would be nice if you laid down on the couch and rested your head on my thigh, and we would’ve still watched the show together, but I probably would have played with your hair. Or, I might want to touch your face or your cheek to get your attention, or cup my hand against your face, or place my fingers beneath your chin. Things like that are…physical gestures that can be a lot for people who are submissives. And a lot for people in general. They’re invasive. But they’re also designed to be commanding and comforting.’

‘So…the control thing you have, and also liking to take care of people.’

‘That’s exactly it,’ Arden said warmly. ‘I’m so proud of you for understanding what I’m trying to say.’

Efnisien’s face had just started to return to a normal temperature again, and he gave up on not looking like a tomato. He could barely process the things that Arden was actually describing. The last time he laid his head on someone’s lap, he’d been thirteen, and Crielle stroked his hair back from his head with her manicured nails, and he gazed off into the middle distance and felt like he was soaking up a secret warmth and wished that he could have it forever.

She hadn’t done it again. It had never occurred to him that other people might do it. He’d never given much of a thought to relationships beyond the fact that he knew people fucked in them, and that seemed messy and weird.

‘I’m going to take you home soon,’ Arden said. ‘I think…it’s something you should think about. Also are you going to come back into Cosy?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Efnisien said, trying to take his mind away from the fact that Arden wanted to touch him more but wasn’t doing it right now so maybe…he didn’t? Or maybe… ‘Uh, no, my cousin gave me this really dense book and I sort of like to finish one before I get another one, and I can’t get my head through the text. It’s like, _tiny,_ and it’s frustrating and I keep wanting to finish it and I can’t.’

‘And you have to finish a book before you buy a new one?’ Arden said slowly.

‘I know it’s weird.’

‘It’s not, actually. We get all kinds in the bookstore, don’t think that’s unique or anything,’ Arden said with a sweet smile. ‘Okay, can I make a suggestion?’

Efnisien nodded, he picked up the fidget dice again and spun the levers.

‘How about the next time you come into the store, you bring the book with you? I can take it and keep it until you’re ready to read it. And that way you won’t have to see it in your apartment, and it won’t be there silently judging you, and you can get a clean slate with a new book.’

‘You’d do that?’

‘Sure. I have room for books. And from some of the things you’ve read – even that judo book – it’s not like you stall out on nonfiction that often.’

‘It’s _never_ happened to me before,’ Efnisien said in frustration. ‘Ever. That doesn’t happen to me. But this book is like a fucking brick. Like, both in how big it is but also like, how dense the text is.’

‘Okay, okay, so just bring it over. Get another book. I like seeing you in the store.’

‘What, you going to hug me there too?’ Efnisien said blackly.

‘Do you want me to?’ Arden responded, that sultry voice back again, his eyes narrowing with a warm gleam. Efnisien blinked at him, and Arden raised his eyebrows at him. ‘Hey, Ef, can I call you pretty sometimes?’

‘Jesus fuck,’ Efnisien muttered, and he made himself shrug. ‘I don’t want any of the weird stuff in front of other people.’

‘Okay,’ Arden said. ‘You haven’t said you’re on board with a lot of this anyway. But you were on board with me hugging you more, weren’t you?’

Efnisien nodded.

‘Like right now?’ Arden said, and Efnisien’s chest somehow tightened and loosened at the same time. He dropped he fidget dice and wondered if he’d have to stand, and he nodded, and shifted minutely towards the edge of the couch, just in case.

Arden pushed up on his couch cushion and shuffled forwards and draped over him easily, his arms coming around Efnisien’s shoulders, his head by Efnisien’s head. And Efnisien sat there, eyes wide, the muscles in his chest feeling like they were fluttering.

‘Like this,’ Arden said, his voice so close it was like another touch. ‘Just like this, sweetheart. Is this okay?’

Efnisien couldn’t move. Arden’s voice was deeper, a little rougher, and it was so close to Efnisien’s ear. And his arms were stronger than they seemed when Arden bounced around the house in excitement, or sat there watching television. And his hands were broad, and his fingertips were digging in, just a little, through Efnisien’s jumper. One hand up near the base of his neck, and one hand resting against his shoulder.

Arden wasn’t close enough that their chests were touching, but he was leaning in, and his weight was grounding and good. Efnisien moved his head slightly, and he could smell a faint smoky fragrance, like the base notes of a really good aftershave or cologne. Efnisien used to have a ton of them, but he didn’t have a single one now.

Hesitantly, he started to raise his hands, then they hovered as he froze.

‘Am I allowed to…to hug you back?’ Efnisien asked, remembering what Arden said about not wanting to be touched without permission.

Arden tensed, and Efnisien dropped his arms immediately. Arden pulled back, and Efnisien was worried he shouldn’t even have asked. But Arden’s face was right there, and he was looking at Efnisien closely and then he smiled and leaned back in again, squeezing even tighter than before.

‘You can always hug me back,’ Arden said. ‘You get blanket permission, okay, baby?’

Efnisien nodded and lifted his arms, resting his hands on Arden’s sides.

Immediately, a slew of images in his mind, falling messily like glasses and cups breaking and shattering. All the things he could do if he had his hands on Arden’s body. All the things he could do to hurt him.

Efnisien’s breathing hitched, he pressed his forehead to Arden’s shoulder and screwed his eyes up and kept his touch as careful as possible. The embrace kept going and he shifted, rubbing his face absently against the material of Arden’s shirt.

Arden was taking slow, deep breaths. Long past the point when Efnisien thought the embrace should end and it thankfully didn’t, Arden pressed his nose to the skin above Efnisien’s ear.

‘This is more than friendship, isn’t it?’ he said, and Efnisien shivered.

He nodded, his voice locked up, his hands twitching against Arden’s sides.

‘Do you like it, sweetheart?’ Arden said in that crooning, sugary way he had of talking sometimes. And Efnisien nodded again, his hair dragging on Arden’s shirt. ‘Yeah. Me too.’

Arden’s hand shifted until it was cupping the back of Efnisien’s neck, his palm warm, his fingers loose. Efnisien felt it all the way to the base of his spine, even his gut twinged. He felt it tingling up the back of his scalp, the touch moving everywhere.

‘There we go,’ Arden said, like it was the thing he’d wanted to do all along. ‘Are you shy, baby? You have anything you want to say to me?’

Efnisien shook his head, and he felt Arden’s cheek shift against his scalp as he smiled.

‘No?’ Arden said, still smiling.

Efnisien made a small noise of disagreement and shook his head again. No one had called him shy in his _life._

Even as a child, he hadn’t been shy. Crielle told stories of how he’d been so bright and cheerful as a young child, and as a toddler he’d smiled whenever anyone came in the room. He didn’t remember those years.

‘Okay,’ Arden said softly, stroking the back of Efnisien’s neck once, like a farewell. ‘I’m going to stop now. But thank you.’

He drew back slowly and then he kept his hands on Efnisien’s shoulders like he had at the beach, as he sat back on his calves. He searched Efnisien’s face, and after a while he let go of Efnisien’s shoulders. Efnisien took a deep breath and felt like air was reaching parts of his lungs that hadn’t had air in them for weeks.

The ghost of Arden’s touch stayed all around him. He felt the echo of his hand at the back of his neck, curved there, then stroking, and he could still feel how sensitive his skin still was.

‘Good, yeah?’ Arden said, grabbing for the fidget dice himself and pressing down a bunch of buttons at once.

Efnisien nodded, and didn’t feel the urge to say a thing. But it wasn’t like when he normally forgot language. This was different. A quietness had grown in him that didn’t need words. He hoped Arden could tell he wasn’t upset, and after a moment, he smiled without even forcing it.

‘I like your house,’ Efnisien said.

Arden spun the fidget dice in his fingers and then he sighed all at once, still smiling.

‘Come on, Sleeping Beauty,’ he said. ‘It’s time to get you back home before everything turns into pumpkins.’

‘That’s Cinderella,’ Efnisien said, laughing.

Arden stared at him in surprise. ‘I thought you only read nonfiction.’

‘Dude, even I know the difference between Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella,’ Efnisien said, and Arden laughed too.

All too soon Arden stood and asked Isabelle to stay in the kitchen, and Efnisien took one last lingering look at Arden’s lounge, at the giant fluffy dog whose tail was wagging even though no one was petting her. He didn’t know if he’d get to see the inside of Arden’s house again, but he really hoped he’d be allowed to come back.


	19. Illogical

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what it's time for? It's time for Dr Gary! YooOOOOOo
> 
> Anyway apologies for the slow down. Guess who finally burnt out after smashing out so much of this story in such a small amount of time? If you're pointing at me, you got it right, friends. But anyway I'm slowly getting back on that writing horse again and this chapter's a bit longer than normal which hopefully makes up for it!

‘I patted a dog!’ Efnisien said.

He didn’t even wait before Dr Gary had finished sitting down in his chair.

‘I patted her and I didn’t even hurt her,’ Efnisien said, digging his heels down into the floorboards. ‘And I kind of had a panic attack when I met her but then Arden put her outside and she’s like _really_ well-trained and then I got to pet her and…’

At once he felt like he slammed into a brick wall. He didn’t like the sensation. Dr Gary tilted his head at him.

‘What is it?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Do you ever just listen to yourself and realise how…pathetic your life is?’ Efnisien said, deflating so quickly it left him feeling dizzy. He’d had a really good weekend, hardly any tallies on the whiteboard even on Sunday. Now that he was here on Monday afternoon, now that he’d listened to his own excitement about petting Isabelle, he realised he was…

…Whatever he was, he didn’t like it.

‘Is that how you feel about your life?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Classic Dr Gary,’ Efnisien said drily, remembering that reality still existed and the next hour was going to be a giant pain in his ass. ‘I really did get to pet her though. Arden like, kept his hand on mine, and I thought that I _could_ hurt her, like I knew I could do it, but I didn’t want to.’

‘That sounds like an incredible experience,’ Dr Gary said with genuine warmth. God, Efnisien hoped it was genuine. ‘You’ve had to avoid dogs for years, haven’t you? What was different about this dog?’

‘Her name’s Isabelle,’ Efnisien said firmly. ‘And, I don’t know. Arden could send her away from me and she went. Like, he saw how I reacted and I said I had to leave because I was sure I’d hurt his dog, and instead he just put her outside and said I couldn’t hurt her if she was outside.’

‘That sounds like good problem solving,’ Dr Gary said, leaning back in his armchair. ‘Do you want to tell me about how things have been since our last session?’

Efnisien nodded, then hesitated. After a minute of thinking it over, he decided to tell Dr Gary about going to Arden’s place. It was hard trying to explain that it was a big deal that he got to watch television, while also trying to make it seem like it wasn’t a big deal at all. He was trying to ride the line between not seeming sad and pathetic and stupid and knowing he was all of those things and he was in therapy partly because he was so useless at pretending to be a human being.

‘I’d like to circle back on something,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You said that Arden seemed annoyed that Mika had brought him up by name in session. He was right to be annoyed. Arden may have a public persona or a reputation, but he should have had a choice in sharing when you found out about that personal information. Certainly, it should not have been revealed so explicitly and quickly in a private session in the way that it was. Mika would have apologised more thoroughly, but you were already in the midst of an intrusive thought and we decided it would be better if you could debrief with me, afterwards.’

‘But…’ Efnisien frowned. ‘I don’t know. What Mika said made it easier to like, believe that Arden’s okay.’

Dr Gary grimaced. ‘That’s part of the problem, I’m afraid. Don’t misunderstand me, I think your connection to Arden is meaningful and important, and has been – at least so far – good for you from what you’ve told me. However, you shouldn’t be learning to trust people based on authority figures telling you who is trustworthy. Part of the work we do here, is ensuring you have the skills to know who is trustworthy yourself. Not only that, but Mika only knows Arden in his professional capacity, that is _not_ the same as knowing him behind closed doors.’

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said. ‘Like Crielle.’

‘Like anyone,’ Dr Gary said firmly. ‘How a person behaves in their professional sphere is not always a good marker of how they behave in their personal sphere. Mika had good intentions, but I sympathise with Arden’s annoyance, and I’m glad it seems Arden already had a strategy in place for making sure you don’t learn about certain aspects of his lifestyle too quickly, and that he was able to adapt to having that strategy undermined. It sounds like Arden wants to be careful with how he exposes you to his lifestyle.’

‘Yeah, I think me like, collapsing in the bookshop spooked him,’ Efnisien said. ‘It’s a miracle he even wants to keep seeing me.’

‘I don’t think it’s a miracle,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Why do you think it’s a miracle?’

‘No, come on, don’t do that. Look, maybe you’re so used to giving therapy to juvenile sex offenders that you’ve forgotten that most people choose to _never_ hang around those kinds of people if they can help it! Most people like, make sane choices!’

‘So, you think Arden isn’t sane?’

‘I included you in that as well,’ Efnisien snarked. ‘You’re both batshit.’

‘Let me put this a different way,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I agree that three years ago, you were not safe for many people to spend time with. You were dangerous, and frequently looked for openings in which people dropped their guard or were vulnerable specifically so that you could hurt them. However, you now go to great lengths not to do that anymore. I’m sure you can tell when Arden has dropped his guard around you, and yet you don’t hurt him.’

Efnisien pressed his lips together and absently dug his fingers into the armrest, wishing he had one of those fidget dice like Arden had. Were they expensive? Could he buy one?

‘I still think about it though,’ Efnisien said. ‘But you’ll just say that’s obsessional thinking, won’t you?’

‘I do think that, but that doesn’t mean it’s insignificant or shouldn’t be noticed. It’s important because it both distresses you, and because you’ve acted on obsessional thoughts in the past. This means you’ve set a precedent for yourself, and even if other people let their guard down around you, you need – at least for now – a certain amount of vigilance around your own behaviour. However, that does _not_ mean that you hurting someone deliberately and maliciously is a foregone conclusion.’

Dr Gary hesitated, and Efnisien knew he was gunning towards a _point._ He also had an idea of what that point was, and he didn’t want a bar of it. He set his jaw and stared at a point past Dr Gary.

‘I wanted to ask you about something that came up in the last session,’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien frowned, thinking that maybe he was misreading the situation.

‘Shoot, Doc,’ Efnisien said.

‘You described yourself in terms that made it seem that you think of yourself as a ‘bad client.’ You used it as a justification for why you thought you should be paying higher prices. What do you mean by bad client?’

Efnisien squinted, then turned to look at the plant. It had thick dark green leaves, the kind that smelled of sap when they were torn apart. The kind that he had to tear in a certain direction – down towards the stem – because they wouldn’t want to tear across instead.

He thought of what Arden said about him being an overachiever in therapy, and sighed.

‘I’m just shit at most of the techniques you try,’ Efnisien said finally. ‘And I don’t like to listen to a lot of the stuff you say. And I think about hurting you sometimes.’

_And I’m bad._

‘May I tell you how I see it?’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien grimaced and tore his eyes away from the plant, then shrugged.

‘You have – for the most part – been willing to try any technique I’ve suggested at least once, even if you’ve needed a couple of sessions to understand it better or get more information on the technique, which you do out of caution, and not because you want to make my job harder. You are incredibly cognisant of the fact that you can be combative and hostile, and mitigate those behaviours when you’re aware enough to catch them, or when you have the will to do so. You have never hurt me, even when I can see that you clearly want to, you have shown remarkable self-restraint around your own impulses. And in three years, despite enduring the suffering that this kind of work can bring, you still pay attention to what I say, even when you disagree with it.’

Efnisien stared at Dr Gary’s shiny shoes. They were never perfect, exactly, but they were always cared for. Even in winter when it was hammering down, they never had leaves and mud clinging to them.

‘Because of that,’ Dr Gary said, ‘I see you as an interesting client, not a bad one. Not a ‘pain in the ass.’ There’s no such thing as good clients and bad clients. And if we’re taking it down to actions – harmful actions and helpful ones, unhealthy and healthy – your actions indicate that you are doing your best. You show up and do the work. I have clients who repeatedly come late. I have clients who forget their sessions. I have clients who have tried to genuinely hurt me, and I have clients who have almost no interest in helping themselves. I don’t even think of them as bad clients, but they’re certainly more challenging than you are.’

The whole conversation was uncomfortable. Efnisien couldn’t tell if he was pleased or offended at the idea that not only was he _not_ a bad client, but he might actually be okay. And he immediately thought that maybe he should start turning up late, start no-showing, stop doing anything remotely helpful. But the idea made him cringe, because Dr Gary seemed to want to really help him, and Efnisien knew – had known from the beginning – how rare it was for people to want that once they knew what he was really like.

‘So I’m not challenging?’ Efnisien said mutinously.

Dr Gary smiled. ‘If you weren’t challenging, you wouldn’t be seeing me. But on the spectrum of clients that _I_ see, your progress is refreshing.’

‘Is that like, countertransference? Do you have to talk about your supervisor about how gay you are for me as a client?’

Dr Gary leaned back in his chair and tilted his head and just stared, and Efnisien felt caught out, which was unfair, because that was what he’d been trying to do to Dr Gary.

‘Do you think that my countertransference stops me from being able to comprehend that you’re a bad client, Efnisien?’ Dr Gary said calmly. ‘Are you trying to protect me by helping me to see your definition of the truth?’

Efnisien exhaled heavily, because like, _no,_ he’d just been… He hadn’t been trying to do _that._

‘Is it that the people who want the best for you are all ‘batshit’ as you so eloquently put it, and the people who don’t are the sane ones?’ Dr Gary prodded.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Efnisien muttered. ‘This isn’t the kind of world where good stuff is supposed to happen for people like me. It’s not.’

Arden had been so open and curious and thoughtful, and even though he said that he got something out of their connection, Efnisien still didn’t understand. Arden could have literally anyone, he’d said that himself. So was it just novelty after all? Was it some demented idea that he could save Efnisien from his bad behaviour by just…being nice? Was that it?

Was it that Arden was secretly bad? And that by comparison, he didn’t think Efnisien was that bad? Or was it that he wanted to hurt him?

Dr Gary was silent for so long, Efnisien looked up at him, only to see a thoughtful, withdrawn expression on his face. After a while Dr Gary took a long, slow breath, and Efnisien tensed subtly in response. Dr Gary had tells that meant he was about to get a bead on Efnisien. It’d been a while since they’d talked about the big stuff like this.

‘Do you believe this is a world where good things are supposed to happen to good people, and bad things to bad people?’ Dr Gary said.

‘I mean, it doesn’t work out that way a lot of the time,’ Efnisien said. ‘I’m the one who’s fucked up some of those good people. But sure, I think that.’

‘Can I ask you a question, Efnisien?’

_Ah, fuck. Here it comes._

‘Sure,’ Efnisien said, staring defiantly at him and waiting for whatever was coming.

‘Where are you on that spectrum of good and bad people? If such a linear thing existed, where are you? Right down the bottom?’

‘Sure,’ Efnisien said. ‘I dunno, maybe a bit above serial killers or something, but not much.’

Dr Gary was silent for some time, but it was so loaded that Efnisien shoved his hands between his thighs and wondered if he’d be able to prepare for what Dr Gary was leading to.

‘I see,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Where does your aunt fit on that spectrum, Efnisien? Or your uncle for that matter?’

_And there it fucking is._

‘We don’t talk about her,’ Efnisien snapped.

Dr Gary didn’t say anything and Efnisien chafed in the silence, the expectation that this was something he should talk about, even though he desperately didn’t want to. Talking about Crielle made something strange happen in his head. The subject could come up laterally, he could talk about it ‘just because,’ but to do it intentionally now, if he wasn’t in the right mood, it came at him all wrong.

It was like he blanked out. He was in the room, he was completely aware of the fact that there were probably good reasons to talk about her, but he was just…nowhere at the same time.

‘Like,’ Efnisien said, unsticking his tongue from the roof of his mouth, ‘I’ll talk about something hard, but I’m not talking about her.’

‘We’re not running out of things to talk about,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Can we talk about something else you said in the last session?’

Efnisien shrugged. Nothing like therapy to make him feel like a grade A fuck up. He thought he’d done so well on the weekend, and there Dr Gary was, reminding him that actually, he freaked out about catching public transport and he didn’t go anywhere or really do anything or eat properly or whatever.

Dr Gary was definitely tired of him. Efnisien always talked about the same old nonsense, and even if he did things out in the real world, it was always the stupidest shit. Like patting a dog instead of torturing it. Not like that was on anyone else’s bucket list. People just knew not to do that crap.

‘When we were talking about the bank account that you can no longer access, you said something interesting. In context of your parents, you said that they didn’t really care enough about you to hurt you. Do you remember saying that?’

Efnisien did, and it was so tempting to say it meant nothing, that it’d been a slip of the tongue.

A whole mess of images dumped into his brain at once, as he tried to decide how to respond. Images of Penny and Euro. Images of Crielle hurting him and him hurting Gwyn. None of them severe or long-lasting enough to be obsessional thinking, but all of them unwanted.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘I remember.’

‘Can I ask what you meant?’ Dr Gary said, like it was a neutral question. Like this was ever fucking neutral.

‘I know what you want me to say. You want me to say that Crielle has basically indoctrinated me into thinking that it’s normal to hurt the people you care about, and that not hurting them implies not caring about them. And that’s like, something I had to believe because she was my primary caregiver and that’s how I justify her behaviours towards me, like, she cared about me so she hurt me, and now I think that too.’

Efnisien had started reading books on psychology long before he’d ever met Dr Gary. Sometimes he felt like he was two different people. The one who knew how to do therapy _right,_ and the stupid fucking goblin mess up that had never had a logical thought in his entire life.

‘Is that something you believe?’ Dr Gary said.

‘No,’ Efnisien said.

‘Then no, I don’t want you to say that. Do you think your parents hurt you less by not caring about you?’

‘I mean they didn’t hurt me at all, by not caring about me,’ Efnisien said. Sometimes he felt like Dr Gary was trying to push Efnisien into thinking that his parents leaving him when he was a child was a bad thing, but Efnisien never saw it that way. ‘Honestly they’ve never really cared. Like they have in the sense that they paid for Hillview. And they came and visited me in the hospital. But they only did that because that was the right thing to do. Y’know, like, they could tick the box of appropriate human behaviours if your son is about to die. Also I think they mostly thought I was going to die and were probably told by the hospital staff to make arrangements or whatever. Otherwise they only came home sometimes if things went bad on one of the cruise ships or something, or they had to wait for some controversy to blow over.’

Efnisien shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He was losing touch with his whole body. He was going numb from the inside out. He couldn’t feel his gut or his chest or even his shoulders or his thighs, but his feet and head and hands were fine. He could feel them.

‘There were like…rumours,’ Efnisien said, swallowing. ‘Or like, stories, I guess. Crielle would tell me stories about Penny.’

‘What kind of stories?’ Dr Gary said, like they hadn’t talked about this before, years ago.

‘Um, well. Just stories, probably. Because Crielle had no problems telling the truth, but like, sometimes she’d exaggerate too, if she thought… If she wanted to.’

‘She lied to you,’ Dr Gary said quietly.

‘Like, you know, she would tell me…’ Efnisien stopped. How the fuck did they end up talking about Crielle? He scowled at Dr Gary in suspicion, but the dude actually looked pretty relaxed. Efnisien took a short breath. ‘Anyway, she told me that like, Penny had like- This is so fucking stupid. But she’d say that Penny had done things and they had to use family money to make it go away. Like, I know Crielle made Gwyn’s food bad. And I know I hurt people. And I’m pretty sure Lludd’s beaten at least one person to death. But like, we had a servant once, like a maid, and Crielle really liked her because she was like…because the maid was a perfectionist, you know. So she did good work.’

Dr Gary just nodded. Efnisien nodded too.

‘And then like, Penny and Euro stayed for a month, and Penny was in a bad mood about something. I dunno, she stayed away from us kids. And then one day the maid was gone and I remember there were some people at the house, not like, cops but like…I don’t know. Maybe a coroner and like, one of those gurneys. I don’t know. And then Penny went off on a cruise ship again with Euro. And Crielle told me that Penny had killed the maid, you know. Um, that Penny had stabbed her, and that…’

_‘It runs in the family, my beautiful little darling. You can’t help how you are, and you’re going to be such a splendid little monster when you’re older. I love you so much, Efnisien. So much. No one else will ever understand. No one else will ever love you like this.’_

_‘I know, Mama.’_

‘She said it ran the family, you know,’ Efnisien said, gesturing absently with his hand. ‘That it was like, inevitable. It wasn’t the first time she’d said it, like, at all, but she was kind of sad that night when she told me. Or maybe just tired having to find every fucking corrupt official in the city and pay them off with money or some shit. And I thought maybe she was just telling me a story, but the sadness was like…I don’t know. Anyway, she’s told me stories about Penny on cruise ships as well. But if they were true, Penny would be in jail, right? Like I know _I_ didn’t go to jail. But I also haven’t…um…’

Efnisien wished Dr Gary would fucking say something, because he was getting tired of hearing his own voice. He hated the way his ability to say something fell apart when it mattered.

‘What were you going to say?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘I mean I haven’t…killed anyone.’

He pressed his lips together. It always felt so strange to say. Like he was lying. Firstly, he’d killed animals, and animists believed everything had a soul and was equal, so that was like killing people. He’d killed someone, even if it wasn’t a someone that most humans cared about in the same way they cared about other humans. And then secondly, he felt like he _could_ kill people, and then didn’t that make him basically a murderer? He wasn’t like some pleb thinking idly about it, he knew he had the tools and the skills and even for a while, the desire to do it. Thirdly, he didn’t even know if Penny had killed anyone.

‘She might not have killed anyone,’ Efnisien said quickly. ‘Gwyn thinks she has, but like, Gwyn probably thinks _I’ve_ killed people. Gwyn believes the lies, which came in _so_ handy in those last few years. Fuck.’

‘Why did it come in handy?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Because…’ Efnisien grimaced. ‘No reason.’

‘Do you think Penny could have killed you?’

‘Nah,’ Efnisien said, glad that Dr Gary didn’t push the last one. He laughed bitterly. ‘Nah, she- like I know I said they didn’t care enough about me to hurt me, but like, even if she cared, she wouldn’t have killed me. Like she didn’t _hate_ me. I was just a novelty. They came back from their cruise ships and stuff with presents and she’d like, press her hands against my cheeks and tell me I was really beautiful and growing up great. She like, told me to be good for Aunty Crielle and stuff. I think she kind of thought of me like a pet. But she could be fun. And she was like, superficially nice.’

‘Did you care about the people you hurt, while you were hurting them?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘Aside from Gwyn, like no, man. They were often people who’d rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t want to care about them.’

‘And Gwyn, did you care about Gwyn when you hurt him?’

Efnisien abruptly felt the texture of the knife handle in his hands, and he felt the rush of power from threatening Gwyn with it and watching him go still and quiet. His wide blue eyes, his trembling hair, his perfect eyelashes, the fact that he was an angel in a family of demons. Efnisien remembered Crielle telling him off for taking it too far, for making the wounds too hard to hide easily, for the fact that Gwyn would need to recover and he’d have scars forever. He remembered Gwyn being alone at home, and Crielle trying to feed him poison, and he remembered creeping into Gwyn’s bedroom all the time and watching him.

Efnisien made himself nod.

‘Why did you hurt someone you care about?’ Dr Gary asked, his voice gentler than before.

‘Cuz like, then he couldn’t…leave,’ Efnisien said. ‘And he had to listen to me, even if it was for a little while. And he was like dependent on me.’

 _See? What are you proud of, you fucking piece of shit? What do you have to be proud of? What, you petted a dog without hurting it, and you’re_ proud? _You should die, already._

‘But he did leave you,’ Dr Gary said. ‘And he didn’t listen to you. And he’s not dependent on you.’

‘Yeah, I _know_ all that,’ Efnisien said viciously. ‘I fucking know, okay? I know he got out of that house because of how we treated him, and I know I did nothing to make him want to stay. I _know._ Thanks. I _know_ that.’

‘Do you think you did the same to Crielle, in the end?’

Efnisien wanted to scream. He wanted to tell Dr Gary to fucking shove it. He wanted to take the laptop that was humming and smash it against the armrest of his chair until it broke. For a moment, he imagined punching Dr Gary’s head so hard that it crunched and imploded, and Efnisien could almost feel the pieces of skull scraping across his hand, cutting himself open on Dr Gary’s broken head.

‘She didn’t hurt me, so no,’ Efnisien said finally, staring at Dr Gary gamely.

_Come for me, fucker. You’re not going to win._

Dr Gary stared back for a long time, then nodded.

‘I could’ve turned out like Penny,’ Efnisien said. ‘But I’m not like Penny, and that’s because of Crielle.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

Efnisien shrugged. ‘I think without Crielle, I would’ve ended up like, killing a lot of people. And hurting a lot of people. Like I know Crielle wouldn’t have minded if I killed people, but I knew she was upset about how like, intense Penny got. So she raised me to be better than that. To have like, better control of my impulses.’

Dr Gary drew in a long, audible breath, and Efnisien winced, because if he stepped back and actually listened to everything he was saying, he knew, he knew it was all bullshit. But he didn’t know exactly how, and he didn’t want Dr Gary to come at him with another sledgehammer.

He wondered how Stupidhead was doing down in the Mariana Trench. Wondered what kind of food dumbo octopuses ate. He should look it up. The book talked a bit about them and their flappy ears, but didn’t talk about what they ate. Octopuses were meat eaters, weren’t they? They were hunters, they had those beaks. But what were they hunting down in the Mariana Trench? Did they eat carrion?

He’d have to look it up.

‘Why do you think she exposed you to serial killers at such a young age, if she wanted you to have better control of your impulses?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Because a lot of serial killers are incredibly self-controlled,’ Efnisien said, relieved to have an answer to a question that Dr Gary clearly thought was a zinger. ‘Like, they’re not spree killers, and they’re rarely impulse killers. Even when they act on impulse, a lot of the time they’re still very ritualised and planned. Even Berdella, like…’ Efnisien felt a strange sensation, like a full body flinch, ripple through him. ‘He- He made his victims like, he made them _last_ , you know. He made the m-most of them. He didn’t waste… He didn’t… And he kept logs. Like, he was um, paying attention, you know. He was being careful.’

‘Do you think he was doing that to be careful?’ Dr Gary said. ‘Or do you think he was doing that because he wanted masturbatory material so that he could relive the high of torturing and killing those people with incredible and relentless sadism? Do you think someone who writes down how they’re murdering someone, or someone who takes pictures of their torture, or someone who videos it – someone literally creating evidence – is being _careful?’_

Efnisien felt short of breath. He tried hard not to think of the way Crielle had obsessively logged everything she’d ever done to Gwyn. He remembered the first time she showed him her journals, and he’d been really excited, because he expected to see his name in them. He hoped so badly that she would talk about how much she loved him, or how he good he was being. But she’d hardly mentioned him at all. Almost only ever in context of when he hurt Gwyn.

Those journals, those videos, they were all…

They were all about Gwyn.

Even though she hated him.

‘I mean I think…’ Efnisien said, blinking rapidly. ‘I think… That- It’s… I mean sure, he did that stuff because he enjoyed it, and like, but he didn’t expect to get caught. Isn’t that the hubris of like, a lot of those kinds of people?’

_Crielle never expected to get caught. And if I hadn’t betrayed her, she wouldn’t have been._

‘Um,’ Efnisien said, and then he stood and walked over to the books and pulled one of them out randomly. He’d never done that before. He’d never pulled one out unless he’d been about to throw it. But he held it, and his palms were sweaty on the spine and on the back. His gut felt like it was made of rock. His belly and lower back were clammy.

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Thank you for talking to me about that. Let’s change the subject. I don’t often get you to do homework, and when I do it’s usually to a purpose, like the tally board. But today I have some homework for you.’

Efnisien slipped the book back into the bookshelf, then ran his fingers along the spines to make sure they were flush.

‘Hit me, Doc,’ Efnisien said.

‘I’d like you to join either group therapy, or a social group of some kind.’

‘Oh, fuck no,’ Efnisien said, staring at him. ‘Group therapy? I’m sorry, but group therapy is fucking _shit.’_

‘Then I’d like you to consider some kind of group socialising,’ Dr Gary said. ‘And I’d like you to consider it seriously. Are there any kinds of hobbies or clubs that you’d be interested in joining? Or anything similar?’

‘Dude,’ Efnisien said, staring at him. ‘Why?’

‘Firstly,’ Dr Gary said, ‘your support network is very thin. It always has been. I’ve accepted that you weren’t ready for it at first, but you’ve made voluntary attempts to socialise and it’s been going well for you. But two people – a professional and someone you’ve recently met – that’s not enough. It’s not fair to you, but it’s also not fair to Arden.’

‘What?’ Efnisien whispered. ‘But I’m not- I’m not like…trying to bother him or anything.’

‘I know,’ Dr Gary said quickly. ‘And of course at the moment, you can’t help it, and it’s not like there aren’t people out there who live their entire lives with very thin support networks. But those people are more vulnerable than most.’

‘I’m hurting Arden?’ Efnisien said, staring at Dr Gary.

Dr Gary stared back at him, his eyes widening. ‘No, that’s not what I meant. I apologise, I’m describing this badly. You’re not hurting Arden, but you _could_ in the future be overly dependent on him for validation or approval, or you _might_ end up in situations where you feel like you can only get your emotional needs met through interacting with him. But human beings cannot get their needs met through only one person – I’m not including myself in this, because I’m here in my capacity as a professional – and if you can spread some of your needs out, you’re more likely to benefit, especially when you’re in a crisis. Even if you don’t go to any of those other people, just having them in your life matters. Does that make sense?’

Efnisien was horrified. He almost said: _So I can keep Arden, if I socialise more?_

Dr Gary seemed to see some of that on his face, because he winced. ‘I’m not sure how exactly to explain it in a way that you’re not going to take in a negative light. And I suspect you might not like this, but I’m going to ask you a favour. If you consider joining up with a group or a club, I don’t want you to tell those people about your past. I want you to give yourself the gift of a fresh start.’

‘So you want me to fucking _lie_ to them,’ Efnisien snarled, his hands clenching into fists. ‘You want me to deceive them, because you know no one will want to touch me with a ten foot pole once they know the truth about me.’

‘No,’ Dr Gary said firmly. ‘You know that’s not true. Arden alone disproves that statement. I want you to give the person you’ve been for the last three years a chance. I want you to start honouring the fact that you haven’t hurt anyone for three years, and that perhaps your first foot forward shouldn’t involve disclosing to everyone crimes that you’ve committed in the past, that you are making conscious choices to avoid in the present.’

‘I’m giving them a chance,’ Efnisien said. ‘They should have a chance! If you had a daughter, and some fucker like _me_ came into her life through, I don’t know, a fucking _archery club or something,_ wouldn’t you feel pretty fucking pissed off if that dude lied about all the girls he’d sexually assaulted in the past? If he was like…’ Efnisien adopted the most asinine voice he could think of, ‘…just trying to _honour himself in the present?’_

‘Perhaps you could consider the fact that you’re so overzealous about trying to protect people these days, that the likelihood of you hurting anyone deliberately is incredibly low. You’re more self-aware and self-reflective than the average person, and you’re incredibly sensitive to harming others even on an emotional level.’

‘But if I lie to them, and I hurt them…’ _It’ll be your fucking fault._ No. It would be his. It would always be his.

‘Efnisien, it’s not safe for you to disclose to strangers. You act in their best interests, but rarely in your own.’

‘Well, because people like me deserve to die,’ Efnisien muttered. He saw the way Dr Gary looked at him, and he resisted the urge to scuff the floor, then did it anyway. ‘What kind of fucking groups, anyway?’

‘A book club, possibly, because you enjoy reading,’ Dr Gary said. ‘We could brainstorm some together. I’d prefer it to be something not centred around violence, so video gaming with others is probably out of the question for now. There are often a lot of LGBTQIA+ groups, especially in this city. Perhaps board games, books, music, crafting, or even just trying new places to eat. You might want to consider online groups too, they offer less pressure to interact in the same way, and the friendships that can be made online are still very genuine.’

Efnisien made a point of pulling his chair further away from Dr Gary before sitting down in it. He almost asked why Dr Gary had no fidget dice, because it sure seemed like the kind of thing that would be handy for him to have around the place. He dug the point of his index finger into his opposite palm, and then traced the lines on his palm, and then made himself stop.

What if someone like Berdella had socialised in groups? He did, didn’t he? That was how to get better at hunting. Efnisien knew it was important to make sure he had a wide network of people to pull from, and that they didn’t all know each other, so they couldn’t all warn each other. Efnisien felt dazed and almost idle as he imagined how Berdella must have been in those groups, looking over people and picking victims. Berdella picked people he was fascinated by, but also people that’d pissed him off. Someone had rubbed him the wrong way, and then he’d torture them.

What it must’ve been like, to go to the hardware store and buy a tube of caulk, knowing he was going to inject it into someone’s ears to make them more dependent on him. Or had he just bought it for a home improvement project? Was it something he imagined that day in the store? Or was he in his basement, wanking over photos of other tortured victims, only to see a dusty tube of caulk on the shelf? Did he just get the idea like a bolt of lightning?

Efnisien’s breaths fluttered, he stared in confusion as he tried to figure out something he could barely concentrate on. He hated it so much. He’d seen copies of those photos. To this day, he wasn’t sure how Crielle had gotten her hands on them. He’d only ever seen incomplete excerpts and a handful of photos on the internet, but she’d had everything. And the logs were all photocopied, like… like some cop had gone into evidence and copied everything for her. But the photos were all colour.

It wasn’t all she had. It wasn’t the only serial killer logs or photos she had. It was just the one that stayed with him the most. She collected all kinds of stuff. She had old-school photo albums, the kind a person would put baby photos in, but instead of baby photos and school photos, she had photos of what serial killers had done to their victims. Or pictures of people weathering torture.

He remembered the way the protective plastic over the photos sounded, as it stuck and unstuck, as she turned the pages and showed him the contents within.

_‘Oh, look at this one. Isn’t that positively wicked?’_

_‘Yes, Mama.’_

‘Efnisien, can you please give me a number between one and ten?’

‘I’m tired,’ Efnisien said, his voice cracking.

‘I know,’ Dr Gary said softly. ‘You only have to give me a number.’

‘Like a six, I guess,’ Efnisien said, drawing a breath into lungs that didn’t want to expand. They ached so badly. ‘S’not that bad.’

‘Is it an intrusive thought or a memory?’

‘Um, both,’ Efnisien said. ‘The first and then the second.’

‘Okay,’ Dr Gary said, nodding to himself. ‘Okay. Socialising is still quite threatening to you, and I appreciate that we’ve dealt with a lot of hard subjects this session. I’m proud of how willing you’ve been to participate in these conversations.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien scoffed. _‘Willing._ Like I haven’t told you to shut the fuck up the entire time.’

‘You only said it once,’ Dr Gary said, smiling gently. ‘You’ve been very cooperative on subjects that I know you dislike talking about, that are distressing for you. How are you feeling?’

‘Like…’ Efnisien looked down at the ground. ‘Like I shouldn’t…have been so excited when I came in. Like that was stupid, maybe.’

He looked down at the ground, feeling like it was bad for him to say as much. Because he sounded resentful, and he knew their sessions couldn’t just be…making a big deal of stuff that it wasn’t worth making a big deal of in the first place.

Dr Gary leaned forward. Efnisien felt like he hadn’t pushed his chair back at all.

‘Did I do something to contribute to that?’ Dr Gary said.

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘Um, no. Like, it’s not your job to be- Like it was dumb to think it was a big deal anyway, and… I get that sessions have to be like, work, and not like- I mean I know that.’

Dr Gary was frowning at him. Efnisien could see it in the corner of his eye and he was already feeling really stupidly upset and he didn’t like that he was getting more emotional like this in sessions and that the emotions weren’t just _rage._ Anger was so much easier to deal with.

‘It’s stupid,’ Efnisien finished, shaking his head.

‘It’s not stupid. It’s not dumb to think it’s a big deal, and we could have spent longer talking about Isabelle and what you achieved with her. Would you like to talk about it now?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘Because it’s just a dumb thing that everyone can do. And like, so what that I could do it? Most people aren’t so fucked up that they hurt dogs in the first place, right? They just…pat them. Or maybe they have a phobia and then they pat them and _that_ gets to be a big deal, because they still never hurt dogs.’

‘It’s perfectly normal to want to celebrate your achievements, and to feel upset when someone who you thought would celebrate it more, doesn’t. For what it’s worth, I do think it’s very significant. I was excited to hear of your progress, and – as is a fairly typical habit for me – thought that would be a great jumping off point for some difficult work. I wouldn’t have encouraged you to consider certain subjects if you hadn’t come in more bolstered than usual. But, Efnisien, I’m only human, I make mistakes too. We would have wasted no time spending five more minutes talking about what it was like petting Isabelle.’

It wasn’t helping him to feel _less_ emotional, hearing Dr Gary say that. Efnisien just stared at the ground and felt like maybe he hadn’t blinked in a really long time.

‘Do you think it’s not my job to be happy for you when you achieve something that’s important to you?’ Dr Gary said.

‘No, but… I mean I know with like the therapist-client rapport thing, it’s part of your job. But this was a stupid thing to be happy about.’

‘I promise you it wasn’t, and I think we can talk about this more next time. Efnisien, you’ve been achieving so much lately, it’s incredible and important. This time a year ago, you wouldn’t leave your house, the idea of making any friends at all was something met with derision and hostility. You’re having a lot of breakthroughs. And I don’t think I realised how important dogs were to you, until today. That’s my mistake, not your shortcoming. In this office, _all_ of your achievements matter, even when you think they no longer do because you didn’t get the response you wanted.’

‘Fine,’ Efnisien said. He kind of wanted to message Arden, but he didn’t want to bother him. What if he was bothering Arden and he didn’t realise, because he didn’t have anyone else except for Dr Gary and sometimes Gwyn?

What kind of fucking group could he join?

Efnisien didn’t have hobbies. And a book club seemed too Arden-adjacent to be a good idea. The whole idea of joining any kind of social group made him feel squeamish and gross at the same time. He’d never been a member of any. Crielle didn’t encourage him to do any kind of extracurricular activity that brought him into close contact with people his own age, and while he did some anyway at school, because group projects were a thing, he was incredibly aware that he wasn’t meant to make friends with prey.

‘What if I can’t find any groups?’ Efnisien said.

‘If you can’t find any, we can talk about it. Do you want to brainstorm a list of groups in the last ten minutes?’

Efnisien didn’t want to. He wanted to go back to the time when he never left his house and things weren’t hard all the time in new ways. At least then, things had been hard all the time in predictable ways. It was its own kind of strange comfort.

But he didn’t want to lose Arden, and he didn’t want to hurt him inadvertently, because he was aware – more than anyone – that Arden had a right to walk away just because Efnisien was who he was, even if he _never_ hurt Arden.

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said, taking a breath. ‘Okay, let’s do it.’


	20. Daring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of Efnisien’s stomach/gut pain is a somatisation disorder, and some of it is definitely a byproduct of what Crielle did, and multiple surgeries. But there’s definitely a psychogenic component to Efnisien’s pain. The line between the two is definitely a grey area. 
> 
> Whoof sorry for this taking longer than normal for this story, I have been super Not Well (TM) lately, and it doesn't look like it's going to end any time soon. Such a pain in the ass! Anyway, I hope you're all taking care.

Searching through groups based on the brainstormed list he’d made with Dr Gary was stressful enough that Efnisien had drawn eight extra tallies on the board mostly because of thinking about taking hammers to stranger’s heads while they crocheted or did ceramics or some shit and watching the blood and brain matter splatter everywhere.

He took breaks from the list by surfing websites for things to buy. After putting some of his income into his savings account and paying bills, he was still left with way more spending money than usual.

So he looked at groups, and then he bought some hair product. He looked at groups, and then he got a fidget dice that looked really cool, in blue and black, because it was actually way cheaper than he was expecting it to be. And then he looked at more groups and had to place some black tallies on the board, and he ate some walnuts and stared at the dried apricots in the cupboard because he’d learned the hard way that they made his gut turn pretty consistently.

It wasn’t until he learned he couldn’t really eat them without getting sick, that he realised he kind of liked them.

The last website he looked at was the clothing website where he’d bought his light grey jumper. He had six tabs open. A sizing guide – but he didn’t have a tape measure. A belt, which made him realise the belt he was using probably needed more holes punched into it. One pair of black skinny jeans. Three jumpers. He couldn’t afford everything, but it was hard to narrow down. He wanted at least one more jumper, and he liked the look of a charcoal grey one, but there was a pale blue one that looked ridiculous and also really soft.

 _Do you own anything with actual colours?_ That was what Arden had said. And Efnisien stared at the pale blue jumper, which was discounted, because obviously most dudes knew better than to buy something in a blue like _that._

But it was cheap, and it was a colour, and he knew from the way Crielle looked in pale blue dresses that he’d probably be able to make it work.

After a while he launched away from the chair and tugged at his hair a few times.

He added two more tallies to the whiteboard in short, angry black lines, then forced himself back to his seat and stared at the shortlist of groups.

The stupid thing was, he was pretty sure he was going to fuck it up. He didn’t _do_ groups. And he didn’t want to attend some fucking group that he was going to mess up in ten seconds, and then never be able to do it again. So while he knew Dr Gary would want him to pick something he really wanted to do, Efnisien wondered if he should just pick something he didn’t really give a shit about.

Just in case.

Besides, there was nothing he _really_ wanted to do. It all made him imagine groups of judgemental, cliquey people who he could still fuck up if he wanted to. Didn’t girls go to craft groups? He tried to avoid them as much as possible. He imagined doing terrible things to them, the looks on their faces, the way the warmth between their legs felt against his hand, because they couldn’t control that body heat. He hated thinking that way. He hated thinking about doing those things. 

He needed some kind of mixed gender group at least, and he didn’t want to go to some machismo bullshit, because he was unfit as hell, and because Gwyn was the one who was always good at all of that stuff. Gwyn liked to pretend he was a shy nerd, and for the most part he _was_ that, but when he was out on the wrestling mats, he’d dominated everyone and commanded respect.

Efnisien stared blankly at the shortlist as he thought of how things had gone with Gwyn last time. How easy it was to start threatening Augus. Easy, because Efnisien sometimes daydreamed about smashing Augus into pieces, or getting a bolt cutter and using it on Augus’ fingers. Breaking him into tiny, little bits, until there was nothing left to love, until Gwyn had no choice but to come back Efnisien.

 _‘God fucking damn it,’_ Efnisien exploded, smacking the side of the monitor so hard that it skidded off the table, Efnisien managed to catch it at the last second and get it back up. He plugged the cable back in, the screen flickered on, and Efnisien grit his teeth in frustration with himself because he could _not_ afford a new fucking screen.

He walked to the whiteboard and added a tally.

‘Just… _pick_ a fucking group,’ Efnisien hissed to himself.

He forced himself to sit down again and stared at everything he’d dismissed. Finally, there were three groups that weren’t the _worst ever,_ but also weren’t great, and he looked up the information on how to join the one that seemed slightly less painful than the other two.

Without overthinking it too much, he dialled the number. Before confirming the call, he added the blue jumper to his cart, the black jeans, and the smallest belt the clothing company made.

After a few rings, the phone picked up.

‘Hello?’ said the most camp voice Efnisien had ever heard in his life. He immediately slid down on the chair, staring up at the ceiling, his heart in his throat. ‘You’ve reached LAPQC, home of the Loud and Proud Queer Chorus. How can I help you on this fine afternoon!’

 _Fuuuuuuuck,_ Efnisien thought. _Shit, it’s the fucking afternoon? When did that happen?_

‘Hello there?’ said the voice. He sounded older, and melodic as fuck.

‘Uh, yeah,’ Efnisien said, his voice rasping. He cleared his throat. ‘Um. I saw…on your site, to call if- about…about joining? Is there an audition?’

‘Oh my god, _no,’_ the voice said, followed by a burst of parrot-like laughter. ‘Just come down on a rehearsal night. You can see the hours on the site can’t you? We’ll get you to sing, just to know where you’ll go in the choir, but listen, gorgeous, you don’t even need to sing in tune. You’ll be fine. You ever sung before?’

‘Mm. Mmhm. Yeah. But not for like, years. A long time ago.’ Efnisien laughed nervously. ‘I think my voice has broken since then.’

‘So probably not the sweet falsetto you used to be! That’s fine. And if you decide you don’t want to sing, we’re always looking for volunteers to help out with website maintenance, public relations, costumes, piano accompaniments, that kind of thing.’

‘I can play piano,’ Efnisien said. ‘But it’s been…oh shit. Uh, sorry for swearing. It’s been a few years.’

‘Don’t worry about it! It’s not like Trixie – that’s our Tricia – ever wants to give up the piano anyway. But she might let you try. She’s very good. Do you know any musicals? Anything you might want to sing?’

‘Not musicals, sorry,’ Efnisien said, wondering if he’d slice his wrists open or something before they even got to that. Fucking _musicals,_ god, he hated them. Shit, maybe he should’ve just done group therapy or something. ‘I know some opera, but I can’t do the vibrato, like I don’t have a deep vibrato. But uh, do you know Eric Whitacre? That kind of music?’

The man was silent for some time, Efnisien wondered if he’d committed some kind of choir faux pas.

‘Now, I gotta say, we don’t hear names like that much in these parts. I think Bridge’ll like you a hell of a lot. Of course I know Eric Whitacre. What’s your name, young man?’

‘Efnisien,’ he said. _And I’ve killed animals._

‘What neck of the woods is that from? No, no, don’t tell me, let me guess. Scotland?’

Efnisien winced. His parents _hated_ when people guessed wrong. Apparently it was the equivalent of insulting their ancestors or something. Efnisien had never given a shit. Gwyn basically got saddled with a girl’s name, Crielle sounded like the villain of a Disney movie, Lludd’s name rhymed with ‘teeth,’ and Efnisien’s name had always annoyed the fuck out of him.

‘Wales,’ Efnisien said.

‘Wales! Goodness me, you’ve got no trace of the accent! But then you’re not Scottish-sounding either! Anyway, come down to one of the rehearsals, and I’ll put a note saying you might come along.’

‘Do I…do I need to prove I’m like, I’m like gay or something?’

‘Goodness me, no! We operate a lot on good faith. We get the evangelists come down from time to time to try and convert us, but they never seem to enjoy themselves! Can’t imagine why! Oh except for good old Sarah, she joined us in the end! Realised she loved women and left her church and found a god that’d accept her for who she was,’ the man burst into that bright laughter again. ‘Anyway, ask for Anthony when you arrive, he’s our conductor. He’ll sort you out! Did you see the fees?’

Efnisien frowned, then clicked to the right part of the website and stared in shock at the cost. The man seemed to sense his hesitation, and there was another pause on the line.

‘The first time is always free,’ the man said, ‘and if there’s special circumstances, we can accept payment plans. I know it’s a lot, these things always cost more than you think, with the sheet music and the costumes when we do performances.’

‘Yeah, no, totally. I get it,’ Efnisien said.

He could probably pay for it in a few weeks if Dr Gary didn’t change his mind about the reduced rate. If he did change his mind, Efnisien would never be able to pay the fees. He thought it’d be cheap. Efnisien had ruled out groups based on cost already. He thought the local photography group looked cool, but he’d never be able to afford a camera.

‘I mean I can…I can pay it eventually. I don’t even know if I- If I can still sing, or if I like doing it, or um, yeah. I don’t know. Shit, I’m wasting your time. I should-’

‘Listen now, there’s no harm in asking questions, and it doesn’t hurt me a bit to talk to you about our little queer chorus. Come on down just for a night when you’re ready. I look forward to maybe meeting you one day, Efnisien! I’m Teddy, by the way. Well, Theodore, but that sounds so _dour.’_

_Yeah, Teddy just makes you sound like a stuffed animal, that’s way better. Idiot._

‘I’ve got to get going,’ Teddy said brightly, ‘but you have a good afternoon! Thanks for ringing!’

‘Uh, yeah, tha-’

Teddy hung up before Efnisien could finish the word. He sat there for a minute, resting the phone on his computer table, staring blankly at the clothing in his shopping cart. After a while he processed the payment and realised he was getting a dumb fucking blue jumper that he was probably going to be too embarrassed to wear for the rest of his life.

Fucking hell. There was a reason he wore black and grey in the first place.

*

He paced his little apartment. He’d sent an email off to his clients at the university, asking if they knew of anyone else looking for audio transcription work, and he’d gotten a reply within five minutes from the woman who was working on her thesis on slurs. He was too scared to send an email asking about dropping down his hours to the data company, and that left him in a tense kind of limbo. He couldn’t accept more hours doing transcription without dropping down at the data company, because it was getting harder to juggle everything in the first place.

His chest was tight, he paused in the corridor, massaging the rock hard lump of his abdomen. The muscles had pulled together in a cramp and he hissed slightly as he tried to get them to move, to relax. He remembered having peritonitis in the hospital, it’d felt almost as painful as getting stabbed, and then it’d gotten worse, and then they’d wheeled him into surgery again and he’d woken up in four point restraints. He hadn’t even bothered fighting them about it. At least he couldn’t shove his fingers into his new surgical wounds.

But ever since then, sometimes his gut just turned into a sheet of muscle, from his sternum down to his pelvis.

He made a soft, desperate noise, trying to get the muscles to unlock, but they wouldn’t listen.

Maybe he hadn’t eaten enough, but it was hard to make himself eat when he felt so apathetic about food.

He forced himself back to the cupboard and looked inside. Eventually he made himself a small bowl of instant porridge with water. Every time he swallowed, he felt like his stomach knotted tighter and tighter, but he forced himself to finish, breaking out into a cold sweat at the end.

Bending over the pain in his torso, he reached awkwardly for the glass of water by the sink and turned the tap. He waited until the water was hot, then filled the glass. He sipped carefully, shaking, his knees bent, unable to straighten fully without making his abdomen feel like it was going to tear itself apart. His forehead and lower back were chilled.

The hot water helped. It always helped. But it didn’t make the pain go away. He drank all the water, filled the glass again, then pressed it tight in his hands and focused on the heat in between his palms.

Tomorrow he’d go to The Cosy Book Corner. He’d bring that astrophysics book, he’d buy a new one, he’d get to see Arden. And Friday he’d see Dr Gary again because they were still on twice weekly sessions.

Efnisien remembered watching that baking show with Arden on his couch, clicking the fidget cube. The whole place had felt bathed in a weird kind of warm light. Efnisien’s place was often dark. He had bare globes and he didn’t turn on any more lights than necessary, because of the electricity bill. But even with all the lights on, his place looked unwelcoming. During the day, the sun was rarely able to directly shine through the one window he had. His apartment always felt so cold and unlived in.

He’d always thought it was proof he wasn’t a person. Because he lived there, but it still felt empty.

He stared at his books on the bookshelf, then walked over – back and knees bent to accommodate his stupid stomach – and reached for the one on deep sea creatures. He clambered onto the couch and curled up with the book, pressing it to his chest.

Was it progress? Looking for groups? Calling one? Emailing the people at the university? Was that what Dr Gary would call progress?

When he’d shed the charismatic hunter inside of him, he’d shed his ability to handle people the way he used to. It used to be easy to make phone calls. It used to be easy to talk to adults or children or people his own age. It was easy to be rich, easy to be powerful and it was easy to seem vulnerable and it was easy to smile and laugh and even wink at people. He’d thought some of that was him. Truly _him._ He knew he weaponised it as a hunter, but he didn’t realise it was all make believe, until it was gone.

It was like when he shed the inhuman part of him, he shed the human part too.

He shuddered into the pain in his stomach and his eyes screwed up. He was meant to go back and see the specialists every three months, but he couldn’t afford it. He hadn’t been able to afford it for two years. He was still alive, wasn’t he? And the pain was bad, but it was the same. It was the same amount of bad. Random cramps sometimes, random waves of pain, and they did say that Crielle had sheared through some nerves and pain was just…going to happen.

‘It was a catastrophic attack that targeted many of your major organs,’ the doctor had said. ‘Are you sure you did this to yourself?’

Efnisien remembered nodding. The doctor had just stared at him, then sighed.

‘We’ve removed twenty five percent of your liver. It should regenerate back to its normal size in time. You’re young, your prognosis is relatively positive, but you can expect ongoing difficulties with eating and digestion, as well as…’

And Efnisien had tuned the rest of it out.

He didn’t care. He’d wanted to die. He was going to go to Hillview, Crielle was gone, nothing mattered.

He drew in a short breath, unable to expand his lungs all the way without hurting the muscles that were cramping. After a while he disappeared into an uneasy, pained blankness. It was a strange half-sleep, but he was used to it, and he let the darkness wash over him, grateful to not have to think for a little while.

*

When he woke, the worst of the cramps had eased. He tentatively straightened his legs. He felt like he’d been beaten. Since being jumped in Hillview, he actually knew what that felt like now.

‘S’actually kind of comparable,’ Efnisien mumbled to himself.

He swung his legs off the couch and put the book beside him, then petted it a few times. After a while he stood up, straightening hesitantly, until he realised he could straighten all the way with nothing more than a ghostly ache rippling through him. It was only four thirty in the afternoon. He felt like it was past midnight. His sense of time was shot to hell.

Arden’s scarf was in his bedroom, on his bedside table. Efnisien picked it up and ran it through his fingers, before putting it on. He felt better after doing that, and wanted to send him a text message, but didn’t want to bother him.

He went back to his computer and wrote a quick email to the data company before he could rethink it, and then he wrote an email back to Chandra, saying that he wanted to pick up another eight to twelve hours of audio transcription, with the same turnover time they were used to expecting from him. In a rare moment, he said he liked her project, and anything else like that would be really interesting. He hoped that wasn’t unprofessional to say.

He was closing out of the window when he saw the LAPQC website. He clicked back over to their contact page and realised they were having a rehearsal that night. Every Wednesday and Saturday at seven. Efnisien stared at the page and quickly looked up the address.

It was quicker to walk to than Arden’s store. Only fifteen minutes away in a small theatre on the edge of town. He tapped the table absently, then he pulled up a C major scale on Youtube and played the first note.

He sang it afterwards and listened to himself.

His voice was shaky, but it was _kind_ of like a C, wasn’t it? It wasn’t perfect pitch like he used to have, but his chest felt tight and he hadn’t sung in _years._

What the fuck was he even going to sing?

He couldn’t go _tonight_ could he?

But what the hell was he going to do at home?

He smashed all his fingers into the keyboard at once, the computer beeped an error at him. Efnisien stood and shoved his phone into his pocket, grabbed his wallet and his keys, then realised that if he left now, he’d get there two hours early. He sat down again and rested his forehead on the table.

*

Two hours later, his gut threatening to seize, he left his apartment and headed out, thinking that Dr Gary had better be fucking happy with him when Efnisien saw him on Friday.

But…

But he’d get to see Arden tomorrow, and he’d get a new book. Maybe something with a blue spine, or a green one. Maybe something on sea creatures.

His breaths shook out of him. One after the other. Goddamn it. He wasn’t going to be able to sing for shit. Helplessly, he laughed under his breath and kept his head down. He pulled Arden’s scarf tighter around his neck and imagined it was Arden’s arms, instead.


	21. Voice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, politics sucks doesn't it? I am absolutely practicing escapism through writing and sometimes eating chicken Twisties (if you're not Australian, you won't understand, but they're SO GOOD).

‘Hiya, are you lost? Or new?’ A young woman stopped next to him, maybe a couple of years younger than him. Efnisien stood nervously on the steps in front of the theatre, his thumbs stuck in his pockets because he’d already chewed one to hell and back. He stared at her and felt like he was swallowing down so many shitty fucking memories of what he’d done to other people that he forgot how to inhale.

He made a faint, questioning sound that was about as panicked as he felt.

‘New?’ she said, smiling at him. Efnisien nodded once.

_Don’t stand near me. I hurt people._

‘Come on!’ she said. ‘You’ll be fine. Everyone’s super friendly, and a lot of us still get really nervous before rehearsals and definitely before performances. I’m Rebecca, by the way.’

‘Efnisien,’ he said, feeling like he was choking on his own voice, even though he knew he sounded almost normal.

‘Oh, is that like, Finnish or something?’

‘Welsh,’ Efnisien said.

_Don’t hurt her, don’t hurt her. Have you ever hurt anyone named Rebecca? Don’t fucking think about it._

She stared at him in that way that made it clear that she didn’t really know where ‘Welsh’ was from, and Efnisien didn’t have the heart to explain it to her. All too soon she was smiling at him again and walking forwards, expecting him to follow her.

He was imagining grabbing her from behind and getting a foot into the back of her leg, slamming into it so that she collapsed forwards into the brick steps. He would pin his knee in her lower back, reach his hands around and _hurt_ her. He would. And then she’d go silent or she’d scream, there was never much of a middle ground. And if she screamed, he’d slap her or cover her mouth and do as much damage as he could before he pushed her away, threatening her with the weight of his wealth, power, his family. All things he didn’t have anymore. But she didn’t know that. She didn’t have to know that.

His breaths were so weak and shallow, she looked at him and smiled sympathetically. He wanted to grab her and shake her hard and yell at her to run the fuck away. God, he should never be trusted around other people, ever. He didn’t know why he was this way. But he couldn’t stop seeing it. He couldn’t stop feeling it in his hands, the shape of her breast, her belly, the warmth that existed between her legs.

Noise slammed into him when he got into the large foyer. People were mingling, Efnisien caught sight of a lot of people with bright coloured hair, or unconventional hairstyles, or bright clothing, among people who looked way more fucking conservative. He caught hints of extremely camp voices, and a lot of swearing, and he heard a lot of laughter, sometimes whole groups laughing at once, and he didn’t belong here.

He’d never belong here, or in any group. He’d never belonged in groups. Crielle said he shouldn’t join any, that he didn’t have that kind of personality, and he was really fucking feeling the truth of that.

‘ _Oh?’_ a voice cut through the din. Efnisien realised from the brightness of that single syllable that it was Teddy-Don’t-Call-Me-Theodore. ‘He came?’

Efnisien turned in alarm and saw a surprisingly staid, short man, wearing tweed and a red tie. He looked like he was in his fifties. He came over and looked Efnisien up and down, and in that moment Efnisien was aware that some of the others were also _looking_ at him.

God, he did not want to do this.

_So. Fuck YOU, Dr Gary._

‘Efnisien,’ Teddy said, finally smiling at him. Efnisien nodded and Teddy’s face creased. Efnisien was already worried he’d done something wrong.

‘Goodness, you _are_ nervous, aren’t you? Before you run away, let me introduce you to Anthony, our conductor. Come on, lad. Goodness you’re young. Are you an adult? We have a Youth Pride section; they do their own performances as well as joining in with us.’

‘No, I’m…’ Efnisien swallowed. He had to think. He hadn’t celebrated his birthday in three years. ‘I’m twenty.’

‘Very convincing,’ Teddy teased, even as he walked over to a huge group of loud people. Efnisien wished he had whatever mask and façade he used to have. He wished Crielle was there so that he felt confident instead of useless. ‘Anthony? We have a new one for the night. Doesn’t know what his voice is.’

A man who looked like he was in his mid-forties separated from the group, and Efnisien tried not to respond to the way the other fifteen people were now looking at him, because he’d interrupted them all.

Anthony asked him all the questions Teddy asked over the phone. Efnisien answered on autopilot. In the background, he thought of all the horrible words he could call these people. All of the slurs, the microaggressions. He worried more and more that he’d just say one of them without realising, that it would slip out when he desperately didn’t want to say any of them.

All too soon, they were all going into a performance area. There was four sections with chairs, and people had sheet music with them, and there was a woman with really intensely huge blonde hair sitting at the piano. Trixie, Efnisien remembered. Efnisien followed Anthony and Teddy, watching in astonishment as Teddy and Anthony brushed each other’s fingers before Teddy went off to one of the sections of just dudes.

And then everyone – at least seventy people – were all standing in front of their seats, and Efnisien ended up awkwardly by the piano, and Anthony was there with him.

And Efnisien realised they were going to get him to sing in front of _everyone._

‘Um,’ he said, his voice muted.

He wanted to ask to do it privately, but he supposed that was fucking stupid, because the whole point of singing with a choir was that he’d be singing with a group of people. They had to know he was capable of it too.

His stomach was killing him.

‘Just wait with Trixie for a moment,’ Anthony said, ‘and we’ll warm up the choir. It’s hard to sing cold!’

Anthony moved towards the centre of the room. The singers looked at him expectantly, though some looked over at Efnisien. A few offered encouraging smiles. Efnisien couldn’t make himself smile back. He was trying to decide the best way to tell Dr Gary he was full of shit and didn’t know what he was doing and had found his psychology expertise in a turd.

Anthony took each section through a warmup. At the piano, Trixie moved through the notes to cue in the singers with a level of enthusiasm that was one hundred percent not justified.

Efnisien could hear flat singers, people who couldn’t sing in tune, but overall they sounded good unified together. He focused on his own breathing, tried to think of five things he could see, and his brain just kept unhelpfully picking out all the different coloured hair in the room, which didn’t help, because two people just straight up had rainbows dyed in.

There was one person who had a weird pea green shade in their hair, and even their eyebrows were pea green, and their lips, and their eyeshadow. It reminded him of Mika and all of Mika’s blue.

All too soon, they were done, and Anthony walked back to Efnisien.

‘We’re going to walk you through a scale or two, to see your range and get a feel for your timbre and tone. All you’ll have to do is copy the note Trixie plays, and sing it with whatever syllable you like best, like ‘la’ or ‘ah.’’

Efnisien nodded.

‘What inspired you to look us up?’ Anthony said, smiling at him.

Efnisien was aware of almost every single pair of eyes on him. Thankfully, a few people were looking at their phones instead. He reached blindly for some kind of reason, some normal reason a person would look up a group. But he clearly didn’t look like someone who was super excited to be there, he knew he looked either super fucking pasty, or terrified, or both.

‘Uh,’ he said, ‘my therapist told me to get out more.’

‘Oh honey, _same,’_ came a voice from the back of the fourth section that was all the baritone men. Efnisien looked for the person who’d spoken, but couldn’t see him. A few of the singers laughed. Anthony laughed as well.

‘Show of hands for how many people are here because their therapist, social worker, counsellor, psychologist or- Ah, there we go.’

About ten hands were in the air. Two more tentatively joined. Efnisien blinked rapidly at how quickly they’d not only rolled with the fact that he’d answered truthfully – Efnisien figured he was in the clear if he wasn’t telling people about the assault and the abuse he’d done – and how many of them were happy to admit they’d at least seen a therapist once. Enough to be told to join a group.

In spite of himself, Efnisien felt the strangest urge to laugh. It wasn’t like the normal feeling he got when he wanted to laugh, which was often agitated and uncomfortable. This was like a bubble rose inside of him, bursting before he could let it out of his mouth. It was warm.

‘Start him in the baritone range, Trixie,’ Anthony said. ‘As you can see, we’re rather stacked for baritones. But true tenors are less common, even with all these queens.’

Trixie nodded and grinned brightly at Efnisien. He desperately wanted to tell her to calm down for just five fucking seconds.

She pressed a low C, and Efnisien’s eyes widened. He already _knew_ he couldn’t sing that.

‘Um,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I can go that low.’

Trixie and Anthony shared a look, and by the time Efnisien turned to see what expression was on Anthony’s face, Trixie had already pressed a note that was higher, perhaps the A. Efnisien swallowed thickly and realised this was it. He had to do it right now, and he wasn’t a performer. Even when he played piano for Crielle, his hands used to shake uncontrollably. He could play fine when he was on his own, but as soon as someone else was around him, he started to panic.

But he had to fucking do _something._

So he matched the note and sang it shakily, but mostly in tune. He knew that. He wasn’t flat or anything. But god, his voice was so weak. He screwed his eyes up and wished they weren’t all looking at him.

Why had he come tonight anyway? Singing out the miniscule amount of air in his lungs just made his gut throb.

The next few notes up were easier, approaching what his new range must be. He began to sing out longer notes, staring at a fixed point on the baby grand piano. He could tell his voice was getting stronger and clearer, but he knew he would do so much better if he wasn’t _terrified._ At least no one was laughing at him. He couldn’t look, in case they thought he was stupid for even trying.

The piano notes kept going, Efnisien kept singing them. Even though his voice had broken, he was doing okay on the higher notes. And Trixie just kept going, even when he was beginning to struggle. Eventually his voice cracked out and he cleared his throat, heaving for breath. Why didn’t he have a bottle of water with him? All the other singers had bottles of water with them. Efnisien needed to get something he could carry some water in.

‘Well,’ Anthony said, sounding pleased and warm. ‘What a nice, strong tone you have, good timbre too, especially since I can tell you’re all nerves at the moment. You’re going to be a good asset to the tenors. Trixie, can you go back to that first A and run it down, so we can get a clearer picture of his complete range?’

‘Absolutely!’ she said, beaming.

So Efnisien sang the lower notes, though he could tell that his throat wasn’t conditioned to it. He struggled, but to his surprise he was able to hit that first low C that Trixie had played. After that though, he just couldn’t fill out the rest of the notes properly. He rubbed his hand over his mouth, his throat felt parched, and Anthony just smiled and waved Efnisien over to one of the empty seats where the tenors were.

‘We’re an SATB choir,’ Anthony said, as Efnisien sat in the second row. He was next to a guy who barely acknowledged him, and a tall dude who looked like he might actually be the friendliest motherfucker on the planet, which was saying something, because Efnisien knew _Arden._ ‘Soprano, alto, tenor, baritone. We do a range of performances and can be hired out, but you don’t have to participate in any of that if you don’t want to. You’ve arrived at the end of our current season, which means we’ll probably just get you to participate as you can, but you won’t be performing, and we won’t get you to come to dress rehearsals. Come talk to me after about fee arrangements, Teddy mentioned you might want to apply for some of our payment support options. Can you read sheet music?’

Efnisien nodded mutely.

‘All right. You’ll be following Ramesh, he’s your Tenor Leader. Don’t worry if you don’t know the cues or don’t understand anything.’

‘Yeah,’ said a gruff-voiced older woman from the alto section. ‘We don’t know our cues or understand anything either.’

Everyone laughed, and Efnisien felt something that was miraculously not terrible alongside the racing of his own heart.

The rehearsal passed in a blur. The friendly guy next to him had a way of pointing at Efnisien’s sheet music whenever they were about to sing, even though Efnisien could tell when he was about to sing, because he could read the music. But he was still grateful, because his awareness faded in and out, his brain busy and frightened and locked up in a space where he was sure he would’ve walked out by now if it was a therapy session.

Part of the problem was that it wasn’t _bad._ So he kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

At the end, the guy who hadn’t acknowledged him at all, turned to him and stared at him coolly. He looked kind of mean. But the kind of mean where he was just mean all the time, versus Efnisien’s kind of mean that he used to use when he’d caught his quarry, where he struck with it when no one expected it.

‘You’re not bad,’ the man said. His voice was reserved. ‘If you get a better handle on your nerves, your timbre will be even better. I was surprised at your pitch. Especially since you said you haven’t sung in years.’

Efnisien nodded, fingers clutching the sheet music that Ramesh had given him.

God, this was so not the person he was. He wasn’t this fucking person.

Crielle would be so disgusted in him.

‘Have you really not sung anything in years?’ the man said, squinting at him suspiciously.

Efnisien stared back. ‘Why would I lie about that?’

_Dude, you should fucking see the shit that Dr Gary wants me to lie about._

The man didn’t say anything, after a while he turned back to his sheet music.

‘Ignore Nate,’ said the friendly guy. ‘He’s a grump. One hundred percent bona fide grump. He only likes cats and Jude Law.’

Nate didn’t even look up from his sheet music.

Five minutes later Efnisien was in a smaller side office, which was clearly shared with about ten other different theatre, improvisation, singing, acting and dancing groups. Anthony was looking through the paperwork in a metal filing cabinet, and handed several forms to Efnisien at once.

‘I don’t know why it’s not online,’ Anthony said, rolling his eyes. ‘It’d be so much easier if it were digital. Anyway, the payment plan form is there. Four, six or eight payments, you choose. And then there’s the form to assess you if you’re low income, so we can give you a reduction in the overall fee. We don’t put that on the website because honestly it costs a lot to run a choir and our performance costs only cover so much. Sheet music – particularly popular sheet music that the crowd most wants to hear – is usually copyrighted, and securing it for the choir is… Honestly, it can all be a bit of a pain in the ass.’

Efnisien nodded, looking at all the paperwork.

‘Did you have a good time?’ Anthony said.

‘I don’t know yet,’ Efnisien said, then realised that was probably too honest. He cleared his throat, wincing, but Anthony was already laughing.

‘No, no, I mean you’re coming in late to the season, and obviously you’re dealing with some shit if your therapist thought it might benefit you to get out more. Also you’re not the first we’ve ever had with social anxiety or anything like that. But hey, you turned up! You turned up and sang with us and you have a lovely tenor voice. You cooperated and didn’t try and sing over anyone, which is _great,_ because we have to teach that to so many people. But you came! So if you decide not to come back, no harm done. But if you come back, we’d really love to have you.’

‘Except for Nate,’ Efnisien said.

‘Except for Nate,’ Anthony said, grinning. ‘That boy just wants to solo all the time, I’m still not sure why he’s in a choir, but he definitely resents anyone who can sing as well as he can, or heaven forbid, _better_. Ignore him, he would’ve also hated you if you couldn’t sing at all, because then he would have complained about having it spoil his ‘ear’ while he was singing. There’s no winning with Nate, he’s our Eeyore.’

Efnisien nodded. He had no idea what an Eeyore was.

*

He leaned against the brick wall of the building, his knees bent to shield his cramping gut. He told himself he wasn’t hyperventilating. But he definitely was. He was in the shadows, most of the others had left, he just had to calm his shit enough to get home. Probably he’d made himself do too much, which was stupid, but he just wanted to…he just wanted to make sure he wasn’t hurting Arden, and he wanted Dr Gary to be happy with him, and he didn’t know when he became this person, but apparently this was the dumb asshole fuck up he was these days.

Footsteps coming towards him, heavy boots, and he looked sidelong to see the gruff woman from before. She was pulling a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket, tapping out a cigarette, taking out the lighter.

‘Mind if I join you while you have your panic attack?’ she said, lighting up. ‘I’m Bridge, by the way. Well, Bridget. Whatever.’

Efnisien nodded as she leaned against the wall next to him. She took a drag of the cigarette and blew out the smoke, and to his amazement, seemed perfectly comfortable standing next to him while he wheezed.

‘It happens,’ she said. ‘Some people get stage-fright after the performance. My wife, she’s a professional opera singer, and she vomits all night after performing. Beforehand, she’s fine, you know. I mean _nervous,_ but she’s fine. And then during the performance, my god, no words for that. And then after she’s just a weak little kitten and she’s a mess. Wouldn’t know why she put herself through it if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve seen her while she performed.’

Bridge kept smoking. She had short, black hair. She was fat, and Crielle would have hated that more than anything, but Efnisien in that moment liked it. He liked that Bridge was short and fat and had a wife and was smoking next to him and not fussing over him or asking him if he was all right and just telling him things.

His breathing started to slow down.

‘You got anyone?’ she said. ‘Like a partner or something?’

Efnisien shook his head, then hesitated, then shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, his voice so weak that it cracked into nothing twice. ‘It’s early. I like him, but I think I might also be asexual, but like, if an asexual can be gay.’

‘Oh, the aces can be _gay,’_ Bridge said firmly, then laughed roughly. ‘I’m stone fucking butch, I know a little about not quite knowing where you are until you get there. I’m not ace, but I know plenty of stones who are. You’re a young little twink, aren’t you? When did you realise you were queer?’

‘I’m not… I’m not a twink,’ Efnisien said, sucking down a long breath and having to exhale it out hard immediately. God his breathing was nowhere near normal, but at least it was way better than it had been five minutes ago. He tried straightening, pressing his hands flat to his stomach. It hurt so badly.

‘You got cramps?’ she said. ‘You get the runs because of performing?’

It was so invasive, so gross. Crielle would have _loathed_ her. She would have considered her to be worse than cockroaches. Efnisien rubbed his forearm over his forehead and wanted to curl up in a ball at home already. He had to walk. He had to walk that twenty minutes home. God, he was such an idiot.

‘Um,’ Efnisien said. ‘Actually… I- I was stabbed a bunch in the gut, a few years ago. And now my stomach’s weird sometimes.’

He didn’t know if Dr Gary would hate him for it, and he didn’t even know why he said it. He’d never admitted it to a single person in his life who wasn’t a medical professional. He didn’t even like telling them, usually they read it in his file. He didn’t want to tell anyone ever.

But Bridge got an exemption because he felt miserable, because he didn’t want to lie to her, because she was just smoking cigarettes next to him and telling him that he could be asexual and gay. Also he kind of liked the smell of her cigarettes.

‘That blows,’ Bridge said stoutly. ‘My ex once smashed a vase into the side of my head, and now I get balance issues sometimes. I mean once in a blue moon these days, but in the first two years I needed an assistive cane – you know, a walking stick – and would wobble and fall down sometimes.’ She laughed roughly. ‘God, she was a bitch.’

Efnisien stared at her in amazement. Bridge stared back, then shrugged and stubbed the cigarette butt on the ground beneath her boot, where it joined the rest of them.

‘They tell me it’s bad for my voice, you know, smoking,’ she said. ‘But I’ve always liked having the rougher voice. Hey, you think you’ll come back?’

‘Um, I need to look at the payment plan stuff but…’ He wasn’t going to. This was going to be his first and last session. He’d survived. He hadn’t told anyone he’d killed animals. He did what Dr Gary told him to do and now he could move on to a group that he was vaguely interested in. ‘…Actually I think, yeah. I think…yeah. Maybe.’

‘Well, you should,’ she said, slapping the brick wall behind her for emphasis.

‘I thought you were gonna tell me it’s like my decision or something,’ Efnisien said.

‘Nope,’ she said, stuffing her cigarettes back into her pocket. ‘Someone else can tell you that. You can tell yourself that. I’m just gonna tell you what I think. Anyway, maybe I’ll see you next time then. That’d be pretty neat. ‘Night, twink.’

‘I have like, a name,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she said cheerfully, walking out of the shadows, briefly illuminated under a streetlight before she vanished around the corner.

He stared at her, and to his amazement, it only took another five minutes for him to feel ready to walk home.

*

He sat under the hot spray of his shower for a solid twenty minutes, his cheek on his bony knee, his hands folded around himself, trying to warm himself up forcibly. Afterwards he went to bed and decided that maybe one day he could buy some more blankets.

Curled up in bed, he imagined the way Arden’s hands had felt around him when Arden had hugged him at his house. He felt Arden’s head against his head, his warmth, that he was small but strong and encompassing all at once. And he reached for his phone and opened it and scrolled through all the messages he and Arden had ever sent to each other.

There weren’t many.

_I sang in a choir tonight,_ he sent in a text. _Dr Gary told me to find a group._

He waited a few minutes, but Arden didn’t open the message, and he didn’t respond. Efnisien frowned, hoping he hadn’t messaged too late or done anything wrong. He put his phone down and tried to ignore the fact that his heart was drumming all over again. He felt ill. He really only messaged people to harass them, and mostly it was just Gwyn. And he stopped doing that when he got into Hillview.

His texts to Penny and Euro had bounced back, and he didn’t text Dr Gary, he was meant to call. He didn’t really know much about texting. He was kind of shit at it.

Eventually he curled up and thought of Stupidhead in the deep sea. In Efnisien’s underwater home, all the way down in the dark, he blew bubbles up at the octopus, and Stupidhead unfurled his stubby little tentacles and moved around in slow motion like he was dancing. And Efnisien imagined his small glowing orange body, his little flapping fins. His throat felt tingly and a bit sore from singing.

He missed Crielle.

But even if Crielle came back, even if she didn’t hate him anymore, she’d hate what he’d become. It was like he’d burned the bridge, and then he’d burned the struts that supported the bridge, and then for good measure he just kept throwing bombs and grenades in that direction. A choir. The blue jumper. Therapy. Arden. Liking a dude. Not hating people. Just…talking to people.

Just talking to them and not secretly thinking that they were all horrible, awful, gross, scum-filled beings that deserved to be murdered and raped and hurt and taken advantage of because they were poor or fat or ugly or gay or whatever else Crielle didn’t like about people.

He squeezed his eyes shut under the blankets. Eventually he sank into an unsteady doze, and woke in a panicked flash when he heard a sound like an alarm.

From the glare on the small bedside table, he realised it was his phone and fumbled for it.

_CONGRATS!_ Arden sent, followed by a lot of brightly coloured celebration emojis. _Sorry I didn’t reply earlier, had a thing tonight. Just realised I’m gonna get like four hours of sleep tonight. WHOOPS. Hey, baby, you coming in tomorrow? You gonna get a new book to replace that other one?_

Efnisien swore he could hear Arden’s voice and see his smile. He ducked back under the blankets and stared at the message. His stomach rumbled uncomfortably. He was either hungry, or he was going to get diarrhea in two hours, and it was hard to tell which.

_I’m coming tomorrow,_ he sent.

_Legendary. All right, I gotta get my beauty sleep, Izzy says its bedtime judging by how much she keeps bumping her cold (!!!) nose into me. It’s good to hear from you._

Efnisien scraped his teeth over his lower lip. _You too,_ he sent.

There were no more messages for a while, and Efnisien felt himself drifting towards sleep again when his phone dinged again.

_I hope you have the sweetest dreams, sweetheart,_ Arden sent.

Efnisien clutched his phone tight.

_You too,_ he sent, feeling awkward and stupid and silly. Feeling warmer and excited and strange.

He fell asleep under the blankets, his phone by his face, even as he imagined falling asleep under the sea, Stupidhead slowly and gamely twisting and twirling above him in the dark water.


	22. Karma

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Graphic depictions of violence.
> 
> *
> 
> Still sick, still burnt out, though this time of year is always rough as well. Comments and reading and kudos are so much love <3333 I hope you're all doing as well as possible. And now I am going to treat one of my trees outside with an eco-oil because it always gets sick at this time of year and I'm really rooting for it!

While walking to The Cosy Book Corner, Efnisien still thought about hurting the dogs that he saw. He couldn’t turn his brain off. He saw dogs, and the intrusive thoughts came. But they burned out a little faster than he remembered, because he kept thinking of how he’d petted Isabelle with Arden right there helping him, and it had been safe. Safe for all of them. He still didn’t want to go near dogs, he didn’t want them near him, he didn’t trust himself. But the worst of the sting had subsided. The last time he touched a dog, he hadn’t hurt it, and he hadn’t even wanted to. 

The intrusive thoughts operated as though they were powered by an engine no longer fuelled with as many cylinders. He was as fascinated by that as he was by the bright green leaves, the bright blue sky.

He’d slept hard, and woke to an email from the data company telling him they’d recorded his request for less hours and sent him a new roster. The email wasn’t overtly mad, but seemed terse. He also had an email from Chandra with two new names he could contact about audio transcription work. The end of her email was surprisingly kind.

_You do good work and I’ve almost never needed to correct terminology which a lot of other typists don’t understand, like intrapellation vs. interpellation vs. extrapellation._ _Damilola Adayemi is a Professor looking for a new typist after her old one retired, she’s strict, but I think you can handle it. If you can, you’ll be set for life. I don’t think she’ll ever retire from academia._

_Peace,  
Chandra._

Now, he clutched the astrophysics book in his hands and felt his skin tingling as he got closer to the bookshop. His whole body was attuned to it, to Arden. He hoped there wouldn’t be any customers in the store, but even if there were, Arden was going to be there. Arden specifically asked if he’d be coming in.

Efnisien thought about how he’d told Bridge the night before that he kind of had someone. He wondered if that was something he needed to tell Arden. He wanted more than friendship. They’d sort of already agreed that it was more than friendship, but Efnisien didn’t know what that meant. He didn’t know if that meant they were boyfriends. He didn’t know if he was allowed to think that, or if it was something Arden wanted.

He was still overthinking it when he walked into the bookshop. The chime made him swear, and an elderly man wearing a grey trilby and standing by the children’s books turned, staring at him in shock. Efnisien saw it in the corner of his eye, focusing on Arden sitting behind the counter, leaning back in his chair and already smiling at him.

‘You’re going to swear like that in my store?’ Arden said. Then he rocked forwards and used the momentum to stand, placing his hands on the counter with a slap. ‘Greetings, and welcome to The Cosy Book Corner! Care to unburden yourself of your- Wow, that’s a fucking tome and a half.’

‘Right,’ Efnisien said, walking over. The elderly man was looking at children’s books again, picking up one with a blue caterpillar on the cover. Efnisien wanted him gone, but he supposed if he wanted to see Arden on his own, the bookshop wasn’t the right place for it.

‘Let’s have a look at this,’ Arden said, taking the book from him. ‘My god, it’s like a postgrad textbook. Jesus. I bet it’s worth a ton.’

He typed swiftly into the keyboard, and Efnisien thought his typing speed was decent. Better than Dr Gary’s receptionist, but not as fast as Dr Gary, which made sense. Arden didn’t seem to need to type much in his job, and Dr Gary would have to type lots of notes for his patients and then would have a bunch of Hillview paperwork to keep on top of as well.

‘Yep. Just a casual one hundred and seventy eight dollars.’

‘My cousin got it on special at a university clearance,’ Efnisien said. He didn’t see Gwyn spending that much money on him pretty much ever.

‘Oh yeah, they can go for cheap at the university bookstores, especially if they’ve been cleared out of a curriculum. And the second edition of this came out eight years ago, so it’s outdated. But still. All right, let me take all seven hundred and forty four pages of that off your hands.’

Arden shoved it beneath the counter and grinned.

‘It’s like it never existed!’ he said cheerfully. ‘Now, young man, I hear you’re looking for a book? Nonfiction? Any particular book colour today? Any particular subject?’

Efnisien felt the pull at the corners of his mouth. Arden’s good cheer was infectious.

‘Um,’ he said. The older man approached holding two books, and Efnisien got out of the way quickly, and headed towards books on plants, because it was better than ending up in front of fantasy or science fiction or some shit.

He didn’t touch any of the books. He was lost in his thoughts. This bookshop was where he’d collapsed. This was where Arden fed him the first chocolate chip cookie. This was where Arden asked to hug him the first time. It was where he’d gotten his first book for himself.

He didn’t want to look at the crimson curtain, but he couldn’t help himself.

That was Arden’s life. Efnisien hated how strange and antsy he felt about it. He didn’t even want Arden to stop that part of his life, he just didn’t understand it and he wasn’t sure he wanted to understand it, except that Arden had already indicated it was part of whatever they had together.

And Efnisien liked what they had together.

So maybe Mika was right, and Efnisien had no fucking idea about it at all.

‘Hey, sweetheart,’ Arden said from right beside him. Efnisien startled, and Arden smiled and then looked past his shoulder to the curtain. His smile turned rueful when he met Efnisien’s eyes. ‘I want to hug you. Can I?’

Efnisien swallowed. Arden had a way of asking which sounded naturally commanding. Like he cared about whether Efnisien wanted to do it, but he had no issues just…laying out what he wanted.

Efnisen nodded quickly, and Arden’s smile widened.

‘That’s good,’ Arden said, stepping forwards and smoothing one hand around Efnisien’s upper arm until it reached his shoulder. ‘That’s good, sweetheart. I’ve been thinking about this all day.’

_Jesus fucking fuck._

And then Arden was there, standing against him, and Efnisien was standing in the store with his eyes wide, his hands by his sides. Arden was so close and smelled good, like that cologne Efnisien had smelled at his house.

‘You’re so tense,’ Arden said, his hands moving slowly across Efnisien’s back, like he was feeling his muscles – or whatever limp shit Efnisien had in the place of muscles. ‘Is it the shop? Or the back of the store? Or something else?’

‘I’m always like this.’

‘Sometimes,’ Arden said. ‘You settled really nicely into the last hug.’

‘Jesus Christ, Arden,’ Efnisien said.

Arden hummed like he was pleased, one of his hands came up and stroked up the back of his neck. ‘Here, put your head down. Rest it on my shoulder.’

Efnisien looked towards the outside of the store. There were displays and pot-plants and stuff that blocked the view a little, but nothing changed the fact that people could walk past and see them. Yet at the same time he’d been hungry for this. During the whole of the day before, as crazy as it’d been, he’d been holding himself up on the knowledge that he was going to see Arden, and Arden wanted to hug him more. Arden had said so.

Efnisien rested his head on Arden’s shoulder and was painfully conscious of how shallow and tight all his breaths were. He couldn’t make himself relax and knew that Arden wanted him to. He felt like he was failing.

‘I’m bad at relaxing,’ he said, to try and explain why he was fucking it up.

‘Shhh, no,’ Arden said. ‘You’re not bad at it. It’s just a skill you can work on.’

‘Yeah, Arden, not having the skills to do something means you’re _bad_ at it, though.’

‘Be quiet, baby,’ Arden said, and Efnisien could hear the smile in his voice. ‘You’ve been the best thing to happen in the shop all day.’

Efnisien fell silent, blinking in confusion as Arden’s hands settled on him, one at his mid-back and the other on his neck, fingers at his hairline. As time passed, as Arden didn’t step away, Efnisien’s breathing slowed. He was hyperaware of it, but it slowed anyway. Arden reached down and grasped Efnisien’s hand and drew it over, placing it on Arden’s side. And then he continued the embrace like it was so easy for him.

Enough time passed that Efnisien let the full weight of his head rest against Arden’s shoulder. His eyes closed. They were in their own bubble. Arden had somehow created it, and Efnisien wanted to live inside of it.

Just when Efnisien thought he might vanish from the world entirely, Arden drew away. He kept a hand on Efnisien’s side, looking up at him, and then turned to the books.

‘So! Any subject? Any colour?’

Efnisien stared at the books and tried to understand the questions. Arden did that stupid laugh, bumping his shoulder into Efnisien’s.

‘Come on, gorgeous, let me help you find a book.’

Efnisien looked at him instead of the books, and Arden’s expression changed. Efnisien had no idea how to read it, but it was gentle, and kind. Arden bumped into him softly again, his smile was so good.

‘What about botany?’ Arden said.

‘No,’ Efnisien said, then rubbed at the back of his head. ‘Um, maybe sea creatures, again. Or like…something to do with the sea.’

‘Cephalopods? You know what those are?’

‘Uh huh,’ Efnisien said. ‘Cuttlefish and octopuses and shit.’

‘I think you mean _octopi,’_ Arden said, winking at him.

‘Nope. If you research the cephalopod scientists, they say octopuses. To be _technically_ correct, if you believe the word actually comes from Greek instead of Latin, people should be saying ‘octopodes.’ Oct-oh- _poh_ -dees. But no one says that shit.’

Arden bounced on the balls of his feet a few times, then took his phone out of his pocket. ‘I have to know.’

‘I’m right,’ Efnisien said, smiling a little. ‘I mean it’s a stupid dumb shitty dork thing to know, and it’s not like it’s ever going to be useful to me.’

‘It makes you cuter,’ Arden said, looking down at his phone.

Efnisien’s ears felt like they’d caught fire.

‘It’s dweeby shit,’ Efnisien said.

‘God, there’s like full on arguments about this online. The only consensus seems to be octopuses,’ Arden said. ‘ _Octopodes_ , though. What a dumb word.’

_‘Right?’_ Efnisien said. ‘Isn’t it the stupidest?’

‘Okay, let’s see what I have for cephalopods,’ Arden said, practically skipping down another two aisles and then crouching down and disappearing. ‘I have three!’

When he stood, he was holding them all. ‘You didn’t pick a colour this time, you picked a subject first!’

Efnisien shrugged awkwardly, and took all the books Arden handed to him. One was black all over and looked kind of stylish, but he didn’t like that it was black. It seemed like something past Efnisien would buy. Or maybe a future Efnisien that he hadn’t become yet. The other two were blue. He picked the one with the blue spine. It had a nice weight to it.

Arden put the other two books back, then took his selection with him, walking back to the counter. Efnisien looked towards the crimson curtain. The Uncosy Corner.

His whole body broke out in chills and then gooseflesh, he tore his gaze away. Arden was watching him closely, not saying a word, and Efnisien wished he knew how to cover up the fact that he was like…constantly drawn to it.

‘Why… do you like that kind of stuff?’ Efnisien said, pointing to the curtain, his voice breaking.

‘You sure you want to talk about this? You’ve asked me versions of this before.’

‘I know. I’m sorry, it’s probably really annoying.’

‘It’s not,’ Arden said from behind the counter. ‘It’s not annoying at all. But I feel like you’re waiting for an answer that’s going to make you less afraid. And if my telling you that I don’t want to hurt you, and I want to respect your boundaries, and that everything behind that curtain is about consent then…I don’t know how to make you less afraid.’

‘I just want to know why you like it so much,’ Efnisien said. ‘It’s even in your home. You said it like, it started from your collection of books, right?’

‘Right,’ Arden said, reaching for a paper bag and smoothly stopping when Efnisien shook his head because he didn’t need one. ‘I started collecting the books because I was already interested. Honestly, I got into it kind of by accident. I was surfing the web for porn, and I found some BDSM pornography. I was really fortunate, I guess, that I found a good studio straight away. You know, studios that show aftercare in their scenes. I still don’t know if that means the model liked it, but it really helped kind of… It meant when I started researching it, I was automatically looking for websites that talked about things like aftercare.’

Arden watched Efnisien so closely, he felt pressured to act like he was super okay with what they were talking about. But he was kind of okay about it. He hadn’t seen anything weird, and though thoughts of Berdella were there, they were kind of at the fringe of his mind, not front and central like they’d been in his session with Mika, or when he’d first seen the Uncosy Corner.

‘It turned me on,’ Arden said, his eyes bright and warm, like nothing about this was embarrassing to him. ‘Um, like the actual scene didn’t turn me on a ton, I can’t remember what it was, but at the time it was so new and different, and I sort of didn’t get it. I think I was shocked? And then during the end where they were talking to the model, I got really turned on. Like the model was talking about how it was hard, but worth it, and how they felt like they’d been looked after, and they knew they could trust their Dom, and they had safewords, and they even said that they’d like…safeworded once and that the Dom was amazing about it.’

Arden leaned both of his elbows down on the counter, bending over it in a position that looked uncomfortable. But his expression was nearly wistful.

‘It was like… Oh my god, there are words you can use to stop things. I never had that with Laurie. I realised I can take care of people, not just in regular ways, but in this specific way that’s like… Ef, I’m really bad at explaining this. It’s funny, I never have to talk about this shit in my classes. Or I’ll give some rote answer if someone asks. But it means something more with you. And I want you to understand that…so much of it is about the psychology for me, which is why it’s kind of upsetting that you think the psychology of it is just…rape and murder, I guess.’

_I’m sorry,_ Efnisien wanted to say.

‘I don’t really know what taking care of people means,’ Efnisien said finally, looking down at his hands where they rested tentatively on the counter. ‘I mean, my Aunt was really good to me. She was like a mother. And she gave me like, clothes and money, and I could have anything I wanted in my room, and she like…she…’

Efnisien shook his head.

He’d been about to say: _She accepted me for who I really am, at least until three years ago._ But he felt like Arden was better than all of that, better than his weird past.

‘That’s taking care of someone materially,’ Arden said. ‘I like doing that too, to a point. But I mean more…emotionally. And I don’t really want to be disingenuous, I like the part beforehand that makes you need that caretaking in the first place. I enjoy taking care of people _in general,_ but specifically in kink, I enjoy taking care of people that I’ve pulled apart first. It doesn’t have to involve physical pain _ever,_ but…I do still like to challenge people within the bounds of what they can handle.’

Efnisien moved his hands off the counter and didn’t have a word for the strange nervy thrill that he felt inside of himself at those words. Like dread or excitement or apprehension or fear or a need to ask Arden to show him what it might be like.

‘How’re you doing, sweetheart?’ Arden asked gently. ‘You’ve gotten really quiet. You spinning out over there?’

‘I don’t understand why I react this way when you talk about it,’ Efnisien said, staring down at his hands. ‘I mean- I get why I flip out, but like, I keep…coming back. I keep wanting to come back. And I don’t- I don’t hate what you’ve done so far, right? I really…’

‘Can I ask you a question, and then depending on your answer, can I make a suggestion?’

‘Seriously- Fucking… Please.’

‘I know we’ve talked about it, but time for a straight up yes or no question. Do you want a relationship with me – one with no sex – until you decide you don’t want one anymore?’

‘Or if you decide you don’t want one,’ Efnisien said quickly. Arden beamed at him and nodded. Efnisien dug his fingernails into the side of the counter and then nodded in return.

‘Going to need a verbal response on that one, Ef,’ Arden said.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, his throat dry.

‘We’re probably going to have to talk about how I’m not exclusive and I fuck a lot of other people but-’

‘I mean I already know you do that,’ Efnisien said.

‘I know, but I’m a fan of ultra-clarity. Now, for my suggestion. When I enter into a connection with someone, there’s like, a question and answer form that talks about limits, things you might want or might not want. I’ve been actually…making a form just for you, one I think might suit you better. It includes stuff I want to try, stuff I’m curious about, stuff I think you might like. It’s only a few pages, and it’s not a test. It’s just…some pages. But it means you will know exactly what you’re getting into if we go any further. Would you like to do something like that?’

‘I mean, I don’t know,’ Efnisien said. ‘It all sounds really serious. And kind of formal.’

‘Yeah,’ Arden said. ‘Not everyone gets into relationships this way, even in kink. But I want you to be as safe as you can be. And Efnisien, this stuff isn’t…safe for you, by default. Ironically, I think that means that a good scene could be really powerful for you! But it also means things can become disastrous too. So I guess I’m trying to be like, the safety guy.’

‘What kind of things are on the form?’

‘Oh, well, like for example there’s a list of pet names I’d like to use for you in special circumstances, and you could cross out the ones you hate, the ones you’d be okay with in very special circumstances, and the ones you’d be okay with me using all the time. Here, I’ve been working on it.’

Arden drew up his phone and pulled up a Google Document, then handed it over.

Efnisien saw the list of endearments and his mouth dropped open. There were things on the screen which no one had ever called him in his life. And ‘babydoll’ was there too. Everything was so…different, and soft.

‘These- Some of these are like, things you say to girls,’ Efnisien said weakly.

‘I know,’ Arden said soberly. ‘You don’t have to agree to any of them.’

But the idea of Arden calling him ‘princess’ made something simultaneously melt and fizzle up inside of him, until he felt like he was floating in a big mess just an inch off the ground.

‘Sweetheart,’ Arden drawled, a knowing smile on his face, ‘do you like some of them?’

Efnisien shoved the phone back into Arden’s hand and looked away. ‘People don’t like that sort of thing.’

‘You’ve said that before,’ Arden said. ‘Firstly, people _do_ like that sort of thing. Some of the best people I know enjoy that kind of thing. Secondly, it’s okay if you _don’t._ Are you telling me that ‘people’ don’t like it because you think you should feel like everyone else does? Or because you’re trying to tell me _you_ don’t like it, and it’s safer to say that people don’t like it instead?

‘So, um,’ Efnisien said, blinking towards the door. ‘There’s really no customers here today, huh?’

‘You’re so cute when you’re flustered.’

‘Aaaand fuck you,’ Efnisien said, his voice muted, before pressing his cold fingertips to his cheek. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Arden did this so easily.

‘Baby, there’s no need to be rude,’ Arden said. Efnisien’s eyes darted back to him, but Arden was smiling like he hadn’t meant it as serious censure. Even so, Efnisien felt guilty, and he tried to think of the best way to answer Arden’s question.

‘I think…I say ‘people,’ because I feel like I shouldn’t…want this stuff,’ Efnisien said roughly. ‘Maybe I’m really fucked up, and that’s why I don’t- Or maybe I’ll hate it. But thinking about it is like, I mean hey, I’m not having a panic attack on your floor.’

‘That’s a win.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘You’re extremely cute.’

‘You _have_ to- You’re- You’re such a…’ Efnisien said, then tried to glare at Arden, and knew it didn’t work by the complete lack of change in Arden’s expression. ‘Seriously, you’re so… You’re- You can’t just say things like that.’

‘Why?’ Arden said. ‘Is it banned? It can go on the list, you know. I can put it on the list that I’m not allowed to ever call you cute. But maybe you like it?’

‘Fucking hell,’ Efnisien said, spinning away and walking over to a stand of greeting cards.

Arden broke into geeky bursts of stupid laughter.

‘You have to come back, baby, you need to pay for your book.’

Efnisien mumbled several swear words under his breath and walked back over. He took out his card. After paying for the book, Arden placed his hand on the back of Efnisien’s.

‘I’m teasing you,’ he said. ‘I mean I do think you’re cute. But I’m not trying to make you truly upset, okay? Remember that signal we had in the car and- Yeah, that’s it. You can make that if I’m ever teasing you too much. You can make it any time you need me to stop.’

Efnisien lowered his index finger. He didn’t know what to say. His idea of ‘teasing’ Gwyn was radically different to Arden’s idea of teasing.

‘And hey,’ Arden said. ‘You went to a choir. That’s huge! Did you like it?’

‘I basically shit my pants,’ Efnisien said, then shrugged. ‘I dunno. The music was okay. I mean some of it was bad, but when you’re concentrating on singing the notes, it doesn’t matter as much.’

‘Yeah, that’s true. I’d love to hear you sing some time.’

‘You know they let anyone join, right? Even if they sing really badly?’ Efnisien said. He still couldn’t erase that list of words Arden had shown him. It was like an after-image glowed in his mind. All those things Arden wanted to call him. Efnisien was scared of how he might react to some of them. It wasn’t that he was afraid of hating them, what if he liked it? What would that mean?

‘Sure, I can still want to hear you sing though, right?’

Efnisien rolled his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something and the bell above the door chimed once and then a few times in a row. He winced and turned, a group of about ten adults walked in. They were in business suits and looked like they were all on a lunch break together. He swallowed.

‘Maybe I should go,’ Efnisien said, clutching the book to himself.

_Can we hang out again? Like that Saturday?_

‘I’ll see you soon enough though,’ Arden said warmly, before turning to the group who were wandering down the aisles. ‘Welcome to The Cosy Book Corner everyone! Let me know if you need any help.’

‘Actually,’ said one of them, ‘we were wondering if you had that latest comic book by that… you know, it’s pink, and it’s just been released, and it was on the news.’

‘I know the one!’ Arden said. He rattled off a title and an author’s name, then practically bounced out from behind the counter and headed towards the group, shooting Efnisien a quick, bright smile as he went.

Efnisien wanted to smile back, but Arden was already talking to the customers and showing them towards a different section of the store. And then two of the others asked him questions, and one asked him about the Uncosy Book Corner. Efnisien spun towards the door. He walked out, down the steps, and into the day ahead of him wondering if it would be weird to text Arden later about catching up.

Would that be annoying? Arden was working, he did so many things. Efnisien had no idea how he juggled everything, Efnisien struggled with working from home, therapy, and seeing Arden sometimes. Fitting choir rehearsals into that made him want to sleep.

But as he walked home, he thought about how it felt to have Arden’s hands on him, how it felt to have Arden’s voice and smile in his life.

*

_‘Hey!_ Hey, Efnisien, right?’

Efnisien was only three blocks home. He turned, confused, his eyebrows pulling together. A guy was walking up to him, around his age, maybe a bit younger. Efnisien didn’t recognise him at all. He looked angry as hell. Tight little mouth, narrowed eyes, tense arms.

Efnisien’s breathing ramped up, he clutched the book closer to his chest. He tried to see if he could place the guy from his experiences at Hillview, but he couldn’t.

‘Efnisien ap Wledig, right? Murdock High?’

Efnisien stared. His hands hurt where they clutched the book. He wanted to look around, but he couldn’t move. He knew what violence looked like. He knew it because of Hillview, and he knew it because of Lludd. The guy was shorter than him, probably younger than him, Efnisien didn’t recall him from his year group. His memory wasn’t that fucking bad. He didn’t know this guy at all.

‘You remember my sister?’ the guy said. ‘Stephanie. Steph Whyte?’

_Oh fuck._

His mind raced. He knew he could play his response in different ways. He could apologise. He could give the guy what he wanted. He could be the monster he was deep down. He looked to see if the dude had a gun on him, the guy’s hands were in his pockets. Efnisien thought he could try running, but he was unfit, and those black eyes looked so furious.

Efnisien felt so far away from everything in his life at that point, so far away from everything he’d gained for himself. Far away from Arden, far away from the bookshop, from the choir, from Dr Gary, from Gwyn visiting him once a month, from Crielle having left him. At the same time he saw all those posts on Reddit, one after the other after the other, talking about what people like him deserved. He knew they were right.

Dr Henton knew they were right too.

And this guy…

What was Efnisien supposed to do? The guy would never believe an apology.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, unable to stop the strange smile that pulled at his mouth, falling back into the role so easily it was like he’d dropped from a cliff into a suit he thought he’d left behind. ‘I remember your sister. Like, my god, man. She was a _such_ a fucking slut.’

She wasn’t. She’d been sweet and innocent. She’d been terrified of him. He’d only gotten at her once, and then she’d left the school for three months, and Crielle had been so proud of him even though they’d had to pay for it. Had to pay for the way he’d managed to fuck her up that badly in an exchange that lasted less than five minutes.

The guy had his hand out of his pocket, and the moment Efnisien registered that, the backhand cracked into the side of his head and he flew sideways from the force of it, bursting into hysterical, shocked laughter as the book fell out of his hands and opened clumsily on the pavement. God, it was just like with Lludd and Gwyn. And it was like Hillview, when they’d come up to him in the shower, and he’d been naked and spouting bullshit and hadn’t thought they were just going to start punching him and never stop.

He’d woken in the hospital, and Dr Henton had been there, all sympathetic, quietly talking about how Efnisien had brought it on himself by goading them, even then.

Just like Efnisien had brought it on himself now.

_This is what karma is._

He got his hands underneath himself, and the world spun sideways, a boot landing hard in his gut. Abruptly his laughter ceased as a cold terror struck through him. Not his gut. Not there. Just not there.

He curled up and then made a choked, hiccupped noise as the pain skyrocketed through him, his whole abdomen seizing as another kick slammed into him. And the guy was speaking to him, swearing at him, calling him a monster and telling him that he deserved to die and that he wasn’t worth shit. And Efnisien wanted to tell him that he knew, he understood, he believed him.

But he could barely breathe.

The kicking stopped, and then he heard footsteps walk a short distance away, and then come back. Efnisien heard himself whimper. Was he that scared? Really? Pieces of paper started raining down on him. Efnisien caught a snapshot of one of the pages, dry writing about the distribution of giant squid in the sea.

For some reason, his eyes were wet.

‘Fucking piece of shit geek. Absolutely fucking _trash._ You’re nothing. You’re _nothing.’_

The hollowed out paperback slammed into the side of his head, the corner striking him just above the ear, hard enough that it made spots appear, bursting red and huge in his vision. And then the guy’s heel came down on his hip, again and again.

He knew he didn’t deserve to beg for his life.

So he didn’t.

But he heard the pathetic sound of begging in his head anyway.

And then footsteps running up to him, and he curled tighter, whimpering out a strange, high-pitched giggle, terrified that more of the guy’s friends were there to kill him in broad daylight. The pain was phenomenal, ricocheting through him, and he curled around it. He was bleeding wasn’t he? He was bleeding.

The kicking stopped. It stopped for more than thirty seconds. He looked up tentatively and saw an old woman leaning over him, worry on her face. His mind put everything together so fast, like it was grateful to have something else to focus on that wasn’t pain and terror. He was aware that she might call the police, and the police might ask what happened, and then he’d have to say that he sexually assaulted the guy’s sister, and then they’d know he deserved it.

He sat up, his joints feeling busted, every movement slow. His legs bent awkwardly, hands limp on the ground. He stared down the street. The guy was gone. Efnisien couldn’t see him at all. He felt bewildered and lost at the same time. The woman was asking him something, and he heard himself shrieking at her to just fuck off.

She backed away, but didn’t leave. Efnisien sat there and wondered if he was about to cry. But he didn’t. So he stood. All the pages from the book he’d just bought were on the ground around him.

He started to bend down to pick them up and cried out, his hands hovering in mid-air.

He hurt too much to bend down. Way too much. He could breathe, which meant his ribs weren’t broken. He knew that from after Hillview. He knew that from Gwyn and Lludd. But his hip felt like it had been smashed, his gut was churning. His vision was blurry. He touched his fingertips to his face and drew them away, his hand shaking violently. The place where the book had struck wasn’t bleeding. But his skin had split where he’d been backhanded, and the blood was itchy and thick.

It was so tempting to walk back to Arden’s bookshop, but all those people were there, and this wasn’t Arden’s responsibility, or Dr Gary’s responsibility. This belonged to Efnisien.

He’d done this to himself.

He tried a second time to bend down to pick up the pages, a strangled, agonised sound sketching out of his throat.

No, he couldn’t do that.

He patted his pockets and felt his wallet and phone still there. He shoved his hands into his jeans and started limping home, because he was only three blocks away, because he didn’t know if that guy would come back.

The adrenaline dumping through his system didn’t let him go, and he kept his head down, and he stared down at his feet as he walked. He realised that somehow, through all of this, he’d gotten cocky.

He’d gotten too cocky, and he’d expected things to be better than he deserved them to be.

So it was right, in a way, that the world saw fit to remind him of reality. They weren’t going to kill him today, but one day…

It was coming, one day.

He sniffed quietly. He scratched at the blood on the side of his face. His throat locked up around the pain in his gut because he thought he might start making random sounds and he didn’t want to do that in public. The three blocks felt like they took an hour, even though it couldn’t have been that long. His hip kept throbbing, worse and worse. When he saw his apartment block, he sobbed out a single breath of laughter. It was funny, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it funny, the way the world worked sometimes?

He knew his place. He’d always known his place. And without Crielle there to protect him, the world was going to let him know where he belonged. Which was nowhere. With no one. Suffering because of the things he’d done.

That was right, wasn’t it?

But when he got into his apartment and closed the door, his hands wrapped tightly around himself. He stood there for several seconds, mind blank, still feeling the grit of the pavement beneath him, and that guy’s voice above him, scratching out sentence after vicious sentence, more of them than the kicks themselves.

Blindly, he reached for the scarf Arden had given him where it was draped carefully over the chair. He pressed it to his face and leaned back against the door and told himself it was fine. It was fine. This was the kind of thing that was supposed to happen. It was meant to be.

It was just karma.


	23. Justice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dr Gary your anger is showing salkfjsadfdsa

Dr Gary took one look at him as he opened his door and Efnisien saw the moment he faltered, even though he didn’t quite move. His eyes widened, and he opened his mouth.

‘Are you-?’

Dr Gary looked at the receptionist, who’d been trying not to outright stare at Efnisien since he got into the waiting room. He’d had to sit down so fucking slowly. His hip wasn’t broken or anything, but he’d caught sight of the bruising when he got changed the next morning and fucking hell, it wasn’t great.

‘Come in,’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien was already standing, because he hadn’t wanted Dr Gary to see how long it took him to stand up. Which was stupid. Because Dr Gary would see it when Efnisien went to leave.

Besides, it wasn’t like he didn’t have a bunch of mottled bruising across his face.

He sat down slowly on the chair in Dr Gary’s room, shifting until he could rest on the hip that wasn’t as bruised. The side the guy had gone for was the worst, but the heel stomps had ground the other side into the pavement. That morning, Efnisien had pressed tentatively at his stomach and abdomen, and realised that even though the kicks there had been terrible, it still wasn’t as bad as his hips.

‘What happened?’ Dr Gary said, before Efnisien had even settled in the chair properly.

‘So like, you know, once upon a time I assaulted a girl at school, and her younger brother realised who I was, and he beat the shit out of me, Doc,’ Efnisien said flatly. ‘You know, that thing that’s meant to happen, because I molested her in the first place.’

‘Did you go to a hospital? Seek medical care?’

‘Nah,’ Efnisien said. No. He’d collapsed over the table with his face in Arden’s scarf and he’d stayed like that until he practically sleepwalked himself to bed. He woke only to take painkillers, which didn’t help.

In the morning, he made sure he could talk, he made sure he could walk, and decided that was good enough to get to therapy.

Dr Gary took a slow breath, the kind that meant he was angry or disappointed or _something._ But he just said: ‘I suppose you’d best give me a full rundown of what happened.’

So Efnisien did. For something that felt like it had lasted forever, the story didn’t take that long to tell. Efnisien felt far away from it. He was sore and he was tired, he was empty inside.

Afterwards, Dr Gary asked him if he’d had any bleeding when he’d gone to the toilet. Or if he had any trouble breathing.

‘Yeah, no, I know what broken ribs feel like,’ Efnisien said. ‘And no blood. Gwyn used to piss blood sometimes, after Lludd. But this guy didn’t go for the kidneys. Like my hips are fucked, but at least they’re not my organs, right?’

‘Efnisien, I’m serious, if you notice any worsening of your symptoms, I want you to go the hospital.’

‘Yeah, whatever.’

‘Efnisien,’ Dr Gary said, his voice hard. ‘I can section you into Hillview if I think you’re a danger to yourself. And that includes not seeking timely, life-saving healthcare. I know you and I have a mutual understanding that you have what you call a ‘casual death-wish.’ But you were viciously assaulted in broad daylight, and went straight home without contacting anyone. With all due respect, you are _lucky_ not to need medical attention, and I’m still not sure you don’t.’

Efnisien had gone cold at the mention of Hillview. Not that Hillview was the worst ever after Dr Henton had left and Efnisien had learned to keep his head down and just do the work. But he had his jobs now, and he had Arden, and the bookshop, and Hillview was where Laurie went and Efnisien wanted to die at the thought of telling Arden he was going back to the place where Laurie went.

He wanted to tell Dr Gary it wasn’t that bad, but Dr Gary didn’t fuck around. He didn’t threaten Hillview for no reason. He wasn’t manipulative like that.

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said finally, woodenly. ‘Fine.’

‘Okay,’ Dr Gary echoed, leaning back in his chair. ‘I understand why you didn’t call the police, but you told me yourself you considered going back to the bookshop.’

‘It was like a twenty five minute walk away,’ Efnisien said grudgingly. ‘Like… My apartment was only three blocks and even that was agony.’

Dr Gary just stared at him with the expression of someone who was disappointed in the fact that Efnisien had just admitted how bad it was and _still_ not gotten medical attention.

‘It would’ve taken me like an hour to get back there,’ Efnisien said. ‘And I didn’t know if the guy would… I dunno.’

‘I know you tend to default to saying inflammatory or provocative things when you’re trapped. But I’d like to ask why you didn’t try apologising first, since you had the instinct to do it?’

‘Because like, I mean lots of reasons. What good would it do? And it’s not like I’m apologising to _her._ And you told me yourself that forcing apologies on victims is like, another form of trauma if they’re not seeking that apology for themselves. And I don’t _feel_ that sorry. Like, I still feel kind of apathetic about it. If I saw Steph again, I’d probably run in the opposite direction. I just wouldn’t want her to see me. I don’t want her to see me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of what I did,’ Efnisien said. ‘Because of what it will do to her, to see me. I don’t want to see any of them. Like, if they seek me out, then okay, I’ll give them what they want. I’ll listen to what they want to say, and I’ll do my best, and I’ll try. But apologising to some stranger I’d never met felt like such a fucking cop-out. Like… He would’ve known I was just doing it to get out of being beat down. And he wouldn’t have understood all the reasons why I wasn’t apologising anyway.’

Dr Gary thought that over. Efnisien looked around the room.

‘Can you imagine,’ Efnisien said, ‘if I contacted all those girls out of nowhere and told them I was sorry? It’s so fucking selfish. Like- I dunno.’

‘It’s a mature viewpoint to take,’ Dr Gary said quietly. ‘It’s true. There’s a myth that receiving apologies from abusers offers closure for every victim. It can be especially damaging if the victim isn’t asking for an apology, or is likely to be retraumatised from seeing their abuser, or hearing from them via letter or call. Likewise, an _insincere_ apology can be incredibly damaging. If an abuser is apologising because they want to feel better about themselves, it’s often transparent to the abuse victim and makes them aware that the abuser still isn’t recognising the full weight of the harm they’ve done. It’s mature of you to acknowledge that you still don’t recognise that, and mature to understand that reaching out to participate in an act of unasked-for apology will likely do more damage than good.’

Efnisien had nothing to say. He didn’t think it was mature to not feel like apologising to the people he’d assaulted.

‘What frustrates me,’ Dr Gary said, ‘is that you then consciously chose something that you knew would incite violence. I understand that you possibly didn’t see any way out of the situation, it sounds like the man in question wanted to be violent towards you regardless, which in many ways has nothing to do with you.’

‘Uh, I’m sorry, but are you brain damaged?’

‘Acts of extreme violence are not restorative or reparative,’ Dr Gary said soberly. ‘A person who inflicts extreme violence on another person is not ever acting from a place of high justice or retributive justice or righteousness, even if they act like they are and both parties pretend that it makes sense. You encountered someone who needs anger management, who likely cannot process his own powerlessness over what happened to his sister. His distress and his upset are real, but he repairs and restores nothing for his sister by harming you. He undoes none of the violence you initiated. That sort of violence is an inherently selfish act.’

‘Like all of my inherently selfish acts,’ Efnisien joked.

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien almost pursed his lips, but it pulled too hard on the bruising and swelling in his cheek.

‘So what you’re saying is that the whole Hammurabi’s Law schtick is still bullshit,’ Efnisien said finally.

‘The concept of deserving is complicated,’ Dr Gary said. ‘We’ve talked about this, and it’s worth talking about again. What you think of as deserving right now, however, is a warped concept of retributive justice. It is a theory that demands suffering in exchange for suffering doled out. In its most obvious form, it is legal suffering in exchange for breaking the law. But retributive justice by its nature must be impartial, and it must take no pleasure in the suffering that occurs through retribution. Otherwise it’s just sadism or schadenfreude or violence for the sake of itself.

‘In the case of restorative justice, which we’ve also talked about, it is one hundred percent not up to her brother to initiate that with you through physical violence. In fact, that is a deeply disempowering act and takes away Stephanie’s agency – unless she directly asked him to seek you out and treat you this way. And frankly, that’s rather rare.

‘In many cases, we see that friends and family who commit violence on behalf of abuse victims, often retraumatise them in the process and make them feel complicit or like they have to agree that the retributive justice was correct, because it happened on ‘their behalf’ even if they didn’t ask for it. Restorative justice is complicated and in the case of sexual assault victims, has a huge scope for re-traumatisation if the process is initiated without the victim’s consent and initiative. Berit Albrecht has done some good work in that arena, if you ever want to look them up. As a result, it should only really be considered in extreme cases where the victim – in this case Stephanie – is seeking that justice, and you can respond with sincerity and trust. What we do here in the meantime, is distributive justice, which is not insignificant or any less important, just because it doesn’t look like violence and deserving, which are the lenses you tend to comprehend the world through.’

Dr Gary had talked about the concept of deserving and justice many times, how it was a deeply flawed concept, how it was filled with privilege. His conclusion was usually that it was somewhat worthless to look at the world through the lens of deserving and not-deserving.

‘Did the guy who beat you seem to be enjoying himself?’ Dr Gary said.

‘I mean he seemed upset,’ Efnisien said.

‘But not impartial.’

‘No, like… He was worked up. He reminded me a lot of those Hillview kids, or Lludd.’

‘Do you think his primary motivation was to assuage his own anger, regardless of your own response to him?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said reluctantly. ‘I dunno. Maybe. Maybe I could’ve said something.’

‘Really? Did you really think that, at the time?’

Efnisien rubbed at his face. ‘I mean does it matter? I hurt his sister.’

‘Yes, it matters. Stephanie isn’t my client, you are. I’m not concerned with her welfare now that I know you’re no longer a threat to her. Your welfare is my primary concern.’

‘How do you _do_ that? You can’t just compartmentalise like that. I fucking _hurt_ her.’

‘I know,’ Dr Gary said, never looking away, never flinching. ‘I know that you violently assaulted her, as you have done to many women, and other people. I know that you have chosen to stop doing that, and that you’ve been working hard on a journey of rehabilitation. I know that it doesn’t cancel out what you did. I _also_ know that you’re my client, and your welfare is important to me and to this process. I know the science states that performing unsanctioned, random and violent retributive justice repeatedly upon clients who are trying to rehabilitate is counterproductive. Beyond the fact that I care about your welfare, your success in this process has a direct correlation to you not hurting people in the future.’

‘You’re all Dr Philosophy today,’ Efnisien said.

‘I don’t think today’s the day to talk about your belief that the _world_ somehow possesses enough consciousness to not only recognise you, but to single _you_ out for retributive punishment, while leaving alone many of the destructive people that have been around you in the past.’

Efnisien felt a cold shiver move through him and his hands clenched on the armrests.

‘Fuck off,’ he snapped.

‘Case in point,’ Dr Gary said.

‘God, you’re really fucking pissed about it, aren’t you? Why does it matter to you? Who cares that someone beat me up? Like, he could’ve shoved his whole hand inside me and it wouldn’t have _mattered.’_

Dr Gary just stared at him, and Efnisien pressed back into the chair. Eventually his hands dropped into his lap. He wished he had a fidget cube.

His hips and gut throbbed in counterpoint to each other, like they were both playing a different, shitty song at the same time.

‘It matters to me,’ Dr Gary said.

‘Are we like…having a lover’s quarrel?’ Efnisien said, looking up from underneath his eyelashes. ‘Is that what this is? A little spat? That’s cute.’

Dr Gary didn’t even look angry. If anything, he just looked milder than ever. Like nothing had never upset him in his entire life.

‘Do you think we’re arguing?’ Dr Gary said. ‘Does the disagreement we’re having feel that significant to you?’

‘Oh, fuck _off,’_ Efnisien snarled. ‘You’re the one who’s gone all ‘higher education’ on me, because some dude realised who I was and decided to do something about it.’

‘Is it upsetting to you, that I’m not agreeing with your assessment of why you were hurt, and what was really going on?’

Efnisien lapsed into a sullen silence. He wasn’t even going to credit that with a response. He didn’t know what he expected from Dr Gary. But now that he was getting it, he wasn’t sure he wanted it.

‘You’re in significant physical pain,’ Dr Gary said quietly. ‘You have been the victim of a violent crime, and it’s not the first or even the second time that’s happened to you. You put in a remarkable amount of effort to come and see me today, and I’m aware that I’m not able to give you what you want in this. What can I do to help you?’

‘I want to stop talking about it. I mean. Even just for today. I’m tired of thinking about it.’

‘All right. Thank you for telling me that, and telling me so clearly,’ Dr Gary said.

And just like that, Efnisien felt like they were on the same steady ground they were normally on. It made something twist up inside of his chest, he felt unexpectedly raw. He felt like he had to explain to Dr Gary that he wasn’t supposed to be nice or respectful. It was breaking the rules.

He rested his elbow on the armrest and then rested his head in his hand. He was so goddamned tired. The walk over had been slow and annoying, and he’d spent far too much time imagining the guy turning up with a gun and just blowing his brains out. And then he’d spent far too long trying to imagine how far the bits of his brain matter would go. Probably the whole walk was just one giant black tally.

‘How would you feel about a complete change of subject?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Sure thing, Doc,’ Efnisien said.

‘I wanted to talk to you about something we’ve never talked about before,’ Dr Gary said. ‘It might seem like an odd subject, but I wanted to talk to you about the hours leading up to putting that USB in Augus’ pocket. Can we talk about that?’

Efnisien felt unsettled. But Dr Gary was right. It’d just…never come up in the last three years. He didn’t even remember talking about the lead up in the earliest weeks when he was drugged up and giving away too much information about himself and his life. He was pretty sure he just said what he’d always said, that he made the decision to help Gwyn, he got drunk, he got the information, he stayed drunk, Gwyn tried to beat him to death.

The end.

He could tell Dr Gary was waiting for him to respond, and so Efnisien nodded jerkily. ‘Um. Sure. Whatever. I don’t really see how it’s important.’

‘I know, and I understand today has been difficult already. This whole week has been challenging and upsetting. So if you want to stop talking about this at any time, you can, all right? You can always stop talking, or tell me you don’t want to talk to me anymore, or walk out. You have many ways to let me know when you’re done talking about something, and I trust you to use them.’

Efnisien nodded and thought helplessly of raising his index finger, the symbol he’d made with Arden. Dr Gary would never understand it.

‘What made you decide to help Gwyn?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘Um. We were um…texting,’ Efnisien said. ‘And he said something really offhand, like, he said that Crielle was coming off like this hapless victim of Lludd and me. Mainly Lludd. I think she was selling the idea that he beat her, and you know, it didn’t look that unreasonable. Like maybe she’s just this poor victim who has battered wife syndrome or whatever, and Gwyn and Crielle are _both_ victims.’

He remembered finding it hilarious at the time. The idea of Crielle as anyone’s victim. Efnisien couldn’t imagine it. He’d never seen her afraid around anyone in his entire life. Not Lludd in one of his rages, which she could tame with a look. Not Penny, not Euro, not the cops, not anyone. The more disgusting and awful and ruthless and violent Efnisien’s fantasies became when he disclosed them to her, the more avidly pleased she’d looked.

Even at the end, she hadn’t been afraid. Even holding the knife, he’d never seen her show a single bit of fear. She wasn’t scared of getting caught, she wasn’t afraid of losing Efnisien, she wasn’t afraid of anything.

‘So,’ Efnisien said, ‘I like… I don’t know. That bothered me, actually. More than the other stuff. I think at that point I really knew I was going to lose him. Like I was texting him nonstop and I could tell it was like throwing shit at a brick wall. Nothing was sticking. And that night he like, he texted me back, but I could tell he wasn’t actually upset to be leaving us. And I couldn’t frighten him into being upset enough to come back.’

‘In a way, you knew you’d already lost him,’ Dr Gary said quietly.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘He wasn’t living with us. And like, it was weird in that house without him. Crielle and Lludd were um, not…’

Efnisien took a short breath.

‘Gwyn sort of needed to be in that house.’

‘What was it like when Gwyn wasn’t there?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said uneasily. ‘Lludd was just kind of low-key terrifying all the time. He broke a lot more stuff in the house. But he does it in this way- Like one night I was studying in the formal lounge, because it’s quiet in there, and he came in and like…’

Efnisien pressed his lips together. He didn’t like to think about any of this stuff.

‘Honestly, it was nothing,’ Efnisien said. ‘But he like, calmly picked up this table runner we had on the table. It was all like, really nicely embroidered and stuff. Crielle liked things like that. And then he wrapped it around his hand really calmly. And he didn’t say a _word._ And then he walked behind me and we had like all these display cabinets in the formal lounge. You know, all glass with LED lighting for all of Crielle’s collectibles and all the antiques and shit.’

His throat was dry, his mouth was dry. Efnisien sat there wondering why this still bothered him so much, when he never normally thought about it.

‘He, um, he like, he punched his hand through the glass,’ Efnisien said, his voice weaker than before. ‘It scared the shit out of me. And I remember like, I swore, and turned around, and he didn’t look at me, and just- Fuck, he like, methodically punched his hand through _every fucking pane of glass._ Like he just did this anticlockwise circuit around the room. And I was sitting there like, too afraid to- to like, leave. Because he wasn’t looking at me, and he wasn’t saying anything, and he must’ve…he must’ve _known_ I was there.’

Efnisien remembered the sound of all the shattering glass. Then a pause, then more shattering glass, then another heart-stopping pause, and then more. He’d been bare foot at the time, and he remembered fantasising about cutting his feet to pieces and Crielle being so mad at Lludd that she’d kill him.

‘And then he like, he took the table runner off his fist and forearm, and he like, laid it back on the table, and he stared at me, and then he left. Just like that. So things were weird, I guess.’

‘Do you think it was intended to be a threat?’

Efnisien shrugged. ‘I think he was really mad and I was there. He’d never ever attack Crielle. But I think he really needed someone in that house to hit. It was really hard to get out of the lounge that day.’ He laughed abruptly. ‘I did end up like, cutting my feet. Because I wasn’t wearing shoes, and the glass was like, god, it was _everywhere._ And I left bloodied footprints for the maid and no one said a word about it. Like, they hated Gwyn, but him not being in that house was like…it was like it broke us.’

‘What about Crielle?’ Dr Gary said. ‘Did her behaviour change?’

‘I don’t really remember,’ Efnisien said. ‘She wasn’t there a lot because she was dealing with the case. It just seemed like she was hardly ever there, towards the end. Anyway so like, the idea of Crielle as this victim seemed like…I don’t know. I don’t know.’

‘You didn’t think it was good that she was likely to do well in the case if she was seen as a victim?’

Efnisien felt sick. His fingers fluttered towards his throat a couple of times, and then he looked around the room.

‘Um,’ he said, laughing awkwardly, ‘I know we stopped keeping like a glass of water in here for me because I used to break them, but could I like-’

Dr Gary was already standing, he walked towards the door and opened it, and Efnisien felt weird seeing normal life beyond the door, knowing he was stuck in the office talking about things that weren’t normal at all. A minute later Dr Gary placed a glass of water in arm’s reach, and Efnisien took it and wished the water were hot like when he drank it from the tap in his apartment. He sipped at it anyway.

‘Crielle wasn’t ever going to go to jail,’ Efnisien said hoarsely. ‘But I guess I just wanted them both to have a chance. And Crielle was trying to make it so that Gwyn didn’t have any chances at all. She wanted… She wanted to _destroy_ him. And I didn’t- Like, I liked to see Gwyn hurt, and I liked to see him crying, but I didn’t want him destroyed, or dead. Like I used to fantasise about killing him, but I like, it wasn’t- It wasn’t _for real,_ you know?’

Dr Gary nodded, and Efnisien nodded, and had no idea if what he was saying was making any sense at all.

‘I didn’t want them to see her as a victim,’ Efnisien said, staring at a fixed point on the floor. ‘Because she…she’s not one.’

‘What is she?’ Dr Gary said.

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said. ‘But she’s not that. And I was kind of… Like she spent her whole life kind of coming across like she never wanted to be seen that way, and then she’d make herself seem that way in a court case just because? And I don’t know, I was really fucking drunk.’

‘You were drunk?’ Dr Gary said. ‘Why were you drunk?’

‘Cuz I was fucking upset, that’s why,’ Efnisien spat. ‘What, like I can’t have feelings? I’m not allowed to fucking have feelings about our whole family falling apart? Is that it?’

‘That’s not it at all. Family break ups are distressing at the best of times, in your circumstances they become unbearable.’

Feeling a little mollified, Efnisien nodded, then drank some more water. ‘Anyway, um, I broke into Lludd’s alcohol stores because like, because I wanted- Because I kind of hoped he’d actually stop just being really weird around me and start hitting me instead. Cuz that’d be way easier. You know. Sometimes it’s easier. And Lludd had all this really expensive alcohol, and I was drinking it, and talking to Gwyn, and I just…I didn’t know. Like I had no alcohol tolerance at all. I don’t _drink.’_

‘What were you drinking that night?’ Dr Gary asked quietly.

‘Oh, like spirits. I don’t know, vodka, bourbon, whatever was there. I kind of hoped he’d come in and beat the living shit out of me and that Gwyn would feel sorry for me and come back.’ Efnisien laughed shortly. ‘Cuz at the time that made sense to me.’

‘It doesn’t make sense to you now?’

‘Why the _fuck_ would Gwyn come back just to be a punching bag so that I didn’t have to be one? Yeah, no, I get what I was thinking, I just also get why it’s stupid. I don’t know, I was smashed. And I just…didn’t want her to seem like a victim. She’s _not_ one. So I- I got the USB drive. I had a few blank ones, and I got one, and I got into her computer and like, downloaded a bunch of stuff.’

‘Was it easy to get into her computer? Did you feel safe doing it?’

‘Getting into her computer was easy,’ Efnisien said. ‘But no, I was shitting myself. Like, if she’d _found_ me. And I sort of had this like, vague idea of what I was doing. Like you know when you’re doing something, and you’re barely aware of what you’re doing, and you’re a million miles away from what you’re doing, but you can see the freight train coming towards you at full speed, and you just…decide to…not get out of its way?’

‘That sounds – to put it mildly – very stressful.’

‘Ha,’ Efnisien said. ‘I guess.’

‘Did you have a concept of what would happen to you even then? When you were drunk?’

‘Oh, she was going to kill me,’ Efnisien said, staring at Dr Gary. ‘That was like, never in question. Honestly, the moment I fucking _thought_ about doing it, I was fucked.’

‘Even if you changed your mind and didn’t copy the material to the USB?’

‘You don’t understand Crielle,’ Efnisien said. ‘I know people aren’t mind readers, I know that. But she had like this really fucking uncanny way of knowing when people were lying to her, or when people were like…not really feeling her vibe, you know. Like she just _knew.’_

His breaths were shaking, and he forced himself to stop talking. All those times he tried to – at the end – convince her of all these horrible things he wanted to do, and she had that look on her face. That doubting gaze, that knowing smile.

_‘Darling, if you wanted to do those things, you’d do them.’_

‘That was something you’d experienced before,’ Dr Gary said, this time a statement and not a question. Efnisien nodded, blinking rapidly, and then made himself stare at the plant. The leaves looked a bit dusty. Did they have to be wiped down? Did that hurt the plant?

‘But not like this,’ Efnisien said finally. ‘Like this was outright- Outright betrayal. And I sort of was like…not thinking about it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if I _thought_ about it, I wouldn’t have gone through with it,’ Efnisien said thickly.

‘It was that important to you, to go through with it?’ Dr Gary said.

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t know why I thought it was so important at the time. I don’t really remember what I was thinking. I was really not like, with my thoughts. I don’t know how to describe it. I guess that’s what you guys would call dissociation, right?’

‘It certainly sounds like it,’ Dr Gary said, his voice modulated and even and – Efnisien thought – a little careful.

‘And I knew I- Well. I don’t know,’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t remember most of the night. I know I didn’t sleep. I know I didn’t really stop drinking. I took a whole bunch of Lludd’s booze back to my room and kept sipping at it until I had to go to school. And then I took some of it to school. And I kept drinking at school.’

‘Given you never had a history of being drunk before that, as far as I’m aware, why do you think it was that important that you stay drunk for that long?’

‘I didn’t want to think about it,’ Efnisien said roughly. ‘I knew what was coming. With Crielle. I knew. And then like, I had to fucking wait. I had to wait. I don’t know why I did it the way that I did it. Like I could’ve just given the USB to Gwyn. But I just…I just wanted _something_ , something that felt like it belonged to me. Something that felt like _me._ So I had to wait so everything could sync up with Augus’ schedule.’

‘How long did that take?’

‘After fourth fucking period,’ Efnisien said, laughing bleakly. ‘And it was like, a warm day, and I felt like absolute shit, and I just… I was so mad at Augus. Like I was mad at Crielle, and mad at Gwyn, but mad at that _fucker_ for taking Gwyn away from me. And I know, I know like, I know we tortured Gwyn, and I know Gwyn decided to leave, but…at the time, it was just…it just seemed like he was the one that had ruined my whole fucking life.’

‘I understand,’ Dr Gary said. Efnisien knew Dr Gary must’ve been hooked on the story, because there was so much shit he could jump on top of that he wasn’t touching _at all._

‘And I guess you know the rest,’ Efnisien said. ‘I attacked Augus, I put the USB in his pocket, Gwyn broke my nose and whaled on me a whole lot, and then they ran and…yeah. So many people saw what happened, but no one spoke out for me, which I knew would happen. And then, um, well.’

‘How soon after that did Crielle attack you?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘Saturday,’ Efnisien said. ‘So not…not straight away. But soon after. I wish Gwyn had just beaten me to death, right? But that would’ve been bad for his case. So I guess it was good that he didn’t. But wouldn’t that have been poetic justice?’

‘Why?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Well, because of how I treated him?’

‘But Lludd was the one who frequently beat him violently, wasn’t he? From what you’ve described, while you punched Gwyn sometimes, it was infrequent, and it wasn’t prolonged. Wouldn’t it have been poetic justice if Gwyn beat Lludd to death instead?’

Efnisien stared at Dr Gary, bewildered. And Dr Gary stared back. Efnisien tried to think about what Dr Gary was saying, but his brain just wouldn’t go to wherever it was supposed to go to. After a while, Dr Gary inhaled and sighed.

‘Did you see Crielle before her attack, after you put the USB in Augus’ pocket?’

‘Uh huh,’ Efnisien said, shivering. ‘Yeah. The first time she didn’t know, she just knew Gwyn had absolutely lost his shit. She was all soft and kind and like, cooing over me, but then she also realised that I was like…I don’t know, I think I was shaking or something, and she noticed. She realised something was off. I remember she kind of stepped away from me, looking at me weirdly.’

Efnisien stared ahead.

‘I don’t really remember,’ he said plaintively. ‘I don’t actually really remember anything after that. I was hungover. And um, I think I was sick? I don’t know. I don’t think I ate anything. I was just waiting. And then I think I went down to the kitchen for something, and she was sitting there real fucking calmly, and I just knew. I knew. Like, I was supposed to be resigned to it, even like, looking forward to it, but I wasn’t.’

‘What did you feel instead?’ Dr Gary asked.

Efnisien shook his head, feeling stupid. ‘Scared,’ Efnisien said. ‘Scared. Like yesterday. Hilarious, right? And stupid. And like, I shouldn’t have done it at all. And I wanted to tell her that I regretted it, and that it was a dumb fucking decision, but you don’t…you don’t get forgiveness after a betrayal like that. She would’ve seen it as _such_ a goddamned weakness if I’d apologised to her. Or if I’d said I didn’t mean to do it. You have to like- You have to stand by your fucking convictions with her, regret is like…’ Efnisien shook his head again.

‘Did she say anything to you beforehand?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘Just at the end.’

‘Did she?’ Dr Gary said, sounding surprised. ‘You haven’t mentioned that before.’

_Yeah, because I hate talking about this, dipshit._

‘She didn’t say much,’ Efnisien said. He grasped the glass of water and drank until it was empty, then put it back. Why was he talking about this? _Why?_ And then he thought he should stop, and then he thought it was too late now. He should’ve stopped ages ago, so he might as well get it out of the way.

Efnisien scraped at his thumb until he tore it open, then he shoved it – bleeding freshly – into his pocket. Just one more part of him that hurt.

‘She told me that I did it to myself, after she stabbed me,’ Efnisien said. ‘And she told me that I’d never looked so beautiful as I did in like, that moment. And then she told me that she hoped I’d die. And then she washed her hands, and she left.’

Dr Gary was silent for a long time after that, and when Efnisien dared to look up at him, Dr Gary’s expression was troubled and he wasn’t making eye contact. Efnisien didn’t know why it helped, seeing Dr Gary’s disturbed expression, when he was normally so calm, so unperturbed.

He wished his thumb would stop hurting in his pocket.

‘She washed her hands,’ Dr Gary said, still not looking at Efnisien. ‘That’s extremely calculated.’

Efnisien snorted. ‘Yeah, she used her specific hand soap and everything, then dried her hands off on the towel. And then she left. I haven’t seen her since.’

_I miss her so much,_ he thought.

At once, he felt so heavy he wasn’t sure he could stand. Talking about these things never made him feel better, but he knew that Dr Gary didn’t always want to know these things to make Efnisien feel better in the moment. It’d be something he stored in his vault or in his notes and he’d bring it up another day, and maybe it’d help then. Efnisien didn’t really understand that part.

‘I don’t know that you’ve had many people say this to you,’ Dr Gary said eventually, meeting Efnisien’s eyes, ‘but what she did to you was horrendous and traumatising. It was an act of violence that you were lucky to survive, and you should never have gone through that.’

Efnisien’s eyes widened. And then, like a bomb going off in his brain, a memory smashed into him sidelong with so much violence it splintered away his awareness of the present entirely.

_‘It’s only fitting isn’t it?’ Dr Henton said, smirking. ‘Don’t you think it’s fitting, that she did what she did? Of course it was monstrous and against the law, but you are also a monster who did many things that were against the law.’_

_Efnisien stared, tense in his chair, feeling paralysed. And Dr Henton was standing and leaning over him, and Efnisien stared up at him, unsure what to say. Of course he was right, but he hadn’t expected…he hadn’t expected Henton to just say it. That wasn’t what psychologists were meant to say, was it?_

_‘Do you think anyone would have truly missed you, if she’d killed you?’ Henton said, his voice low._

_He’d placed his hand on Efnisien’s shoulder. It felt gross, Henton’s fingers resting against his neck. And his breathing was locked up, he realised that his therapy was meant to go like this, because he_ was _a bad person and actually what did he fucking expect? What did he expect? For someone to feel sorry for him? Did he really fucking expect that?_

_‘You know, don’t you?’ Henton said. ‘You know I’m right.’_

_‘Y-yeah,’ Efnisien said._

_‘You deserved worse than what she did to you.’_

_‘Y-yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘Yeah, I- I know that.’_

_Henton squeezed his shoulder rhythmically, and Efnisien stared blankly ahead. He didn’t want Henton anywhere near him. Was this supposed to be reassurance? It wasn’t reassuring at all. It didn’t feel_ good. _He wondered if he was just broken. He was just this broken. A therapist was trying to be nice to him while telling him the truth, and Efnisien wanted to hurl, he didn’t even want to be there._

_People couldn’t even be nice to him, without him wanting to bail._

_‘Really,’ Henton said, ‘for the scales to balance, you should have suffered for much longer.’_

_Efnisien felt like he couldn’t breathe._

_‘I think that’s enough for today,’ Henton said, ruffling Efnisien’s hair. ‘Don’t you think so? I’ll see you in a couple of days.’_

And then he was back in the office, and Dr Gary was asking him for a number and leaning forwards and _staring_ at him, and Efnisien realised his cheeks were wet. He was torn between ignoring the tears and wishing they weren’t there, and getting rid of them. Eventually his hands moved nervously to his cheeks and he wiped at his face.

‘Efnisien?’ Dr Gary said, ‘can you give me-’

‘Henton said the opposite,’ Efnisien bit out. ‘He said the _opposite._ You’re _wrong._ I _should’ve_ gone through it, I should’ve gone through what she did to me, and way worse! Way way worse! Worse than that! Worse than yesterday! And you know that too! You know that too!’

Dr Gary was just _staring,_ and Efnisien was talking about stuff he wasn’t ever, ever supposed to talk about. His voice was breaking. He couldn’t hide behind the glass of water because it was empty. In that moment, he would’ve walked out, but his whole body couldn’t move.

‘I don’t want to talk about this anymore,’ he said. ‘Please? Please? Please can we not talk about this anymore?’

‘Of course,’ Dr Gary said, and then he cleared his throat. ‘Of course we can stop.’

Efnisien sat there, trying to understand what had just happened. Was that a flashback? Not an intrusive thought, but a flashback? He felt _awful._ He hadn’t even felt that bad at the time! That didn’t seem right. Maybe he wasn’t remembering things properly. Absently he rubbed at his shoulder where Henton had touched him, and he stared at nothing and tried hard to think about nothing at all. 

He wiped at his face again. His hips and abdomen hurt. His face hurt. His back hurt. He felt pathetic and he felt selfish for feeling pathetic.

He was supposed to _take it._

‘I hate this,’ he said, his voice high and splitting apart, like he was fracturing into pieces. ‘I hate this. I h-hate it. I know I’m supposed to go through things like this for the rest of my life. I know death is like, too good for someone like me. I know. I know! I _know_ that. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting to just get away from it. Just for like, just for like a second. Just for- I just want- And I don’t want to h-hurt Arden, and I don’t want to hurt the people I met at the choir, I don’t want to hurt Bridge, or Teddy, or even fucking _Nate._ But I hate this. I can’t do it.’

He shoved the heel of his hand into one eye, his wrist blocking his other.

‘I can’t do this,’ he said.

He would have walked out if he didn’t know the whole process would take him forever.

‘You were hurt,’ Dr Gary said gently. ‘It’s normal to feel hurt by that. It’s what it means to be hurt, Efnisien. But I can’t sit here and agree with you that you deserve to go through violence for the rest of your life. I don’t even agree that you deserve to suffer for the rest of your life. It’s terrible to be in so much pain.’

Normally Efnisien would tell Dr Gary to shove it. But he had no words to say.

‘I’m sorry,’ Dr Gary said suddenly. ‘Did you say a _choir?’_

Efnisien froze, then lowered his arm. He burst into wet laughter at the expression on Dr Gary’s face.

‘Uh huh,’ he said. ‘I went to a rehearsal like…Wednesday. You said to join a group.’

The side of Dr Gary’s mouth pulled up in a smile. Efnisien laughed again, dropping his head forward and rubbing at his face.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s like- I mean I didn’t want to join a queer fucking choir, but like- I mean it wasn’t my first choice, but…’

‘And these people you mentioned, they’re all people you met there?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, taking a shaking, shallow breath. ‘Yeah. Bridge is cool.’

‘I know you can’t see the progress you’re making right now,’ Dr Gary said, ‘but I’d like your permission to write down some notes.’

‘Go for it, Doc,’ Efnisien said.

‘And then, for something hopefully a bit more light-hearted, perhaps you can tell me how the rehearsal went?’

Efnisien sniffed and grabbed the tissue from the tissue box when Dr Gary gave it to him, pressing it to his face. He nodded, and as Dr Gary typed, he closed his eyes. Remembering Henton had left him feeling strange.

He thought instead of Bridge chain-smoking next to him after rehearsals in the dark, talking about her life like he was someone worth sharing those things with. Even so, he felt a ghost of a touch on his shoulder and neck, squeezing rhythmically, an echo of a voice telling him over and over again that for the scales to balance, he’d need to suffer for much, much longer.


	24. Onward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sicker than ever! Okay not something to be excited about. I had hand x-rays today, the *easiest* scan I've had in my entire life like oh my god, so much fun. Also I'm doing very very little except that I'd mostly finished this chapter and I was selfish and wrote the vibes for myself. I hope you enjoy them too <3

Arden pulled up to the curb like he had last time he picked up Efnisien. He kept the engine on and shoved open the passenger door like he did before and beamed when he saw Efnisien’s pale blue jumper. It had arrived that morning.

Then Arden saw Efnisien’s face, and Efnisien tried not to react at the way Arden’s smile vanished.

Efnisien had slept like the dead after therapy with Dr Gary. He’d gone straight home, laid on his bed and woken up to piss blearily at four in the morning, before sleeping through his phone dinging at him several times in a row. He woke to four messages from Arden. The first one was a meme that showed a cat in front of some blini, the second was Arden sending a photo of a recipe for blini, and then the third was a text saying: _Can you eat chicken salad sandwiches?,_ and then the fourth: _You okay, sweetheart?_

A scramble of half-awake conversation meant Arden was there now, at four in the afternoon in front of Efnisien’s apartment. Efnisien had called LAPQC to let them know he wasn’t going to make it, only for the woman on the phone to say that unless he was part of the core performance team, he could pretty much turn up when he wanted to. Efnisien still felt guilty, but there was no competition between Arden wanting to hang out with him, and Nate negging him about his ability to sing.

Except that Arden was looking at him so sharply. He turned the engine off. Then he made a sound of frustration and Efnisien masked a flinch.

‘No,’ Arden said. ‘No, it’s fine! You wanted to hang out, right?’

Efnisien nodded.

‘Then get in, and we’ll talk about it when we get back to my place.’

Efnisien wanted to ask if Arden was mad at him, but he didn’t have the courage to do it. So he got into Arden’s car and was glad that all the bruising was facing the passenger window, and not Arden.

Music came on. Arden turned it up and pulled away from the curb, and Efnisien remembered the rules from last time. No talking because Arden got distracted way too easily.

Efnisien knotted his hands together and tried to look like he was relaxed, but he was tense as hell. His hips hurt worse today on both sides. The bruising on his gut was already yellowing at the edges. He remembered that sick murky colouring from surgery and being beaten at Hillview and all the times he’d idly hurt himself growing up to see what would happen. At least his bilirubin was doing what it was supposed to.

He was nervous. Eventually he rocked to the side of his hip that was less sore. At least Arden’s couch would be soft.

They were going to watch more TV. Arden had suggested it, and Efnisien wanted to be on Arden’s couch, he wanted to watch more of that stupid baking show.

Maybe Arden would hug him again because Arden said he wanted to do that more.

It was excruciating, sitting there knowing that he shouldn’t be allowed this. Knowing what that guy had done to him was what the status quo was meant to be. It felt like he was still a criminal, stealing good things from other people even when he wasn’t trying to hurt them. Wasn’t it unethical to spend time with Arden, when other, better people could? If Arden messaged him, instead of a better person, didn’t that mean Efnisien was inadvertently hurting those people?

He kept seeing the expression on that guy’s face before he’d even hit Efnisien. He’d seen that exact expression on Lludd’s face before he’d started in on Gwyn. Even now, thinking about it for too long made him shiver, his skin turned cold and gross from the goosebumps crawling all over him.

Even if Arden wasn’t going to give his time to better people, wasn’t Efnisien being a burden by letting Arden see him like this? Instead of just waiting out the worst of the bruising so that Arden never needed to see?

He twirled a curl of hair around his fingers, then he shoved his hands into the pale blue of the jumper.

The colour really was ridiculous, so white-pale and bright, but it was plush, fluffier than the last one. It made him feel absurd, and it made him feel small, and he realised that he liked it more than leather and tailored jackets and boots that were the latest part of some fashion collection.

Also the new jeans fit. They fit! And even if he needed to use the smallest size belt now, it fit. He knew he looked stupid, skinny jeans with a giant pale blue jumper billowing out over it. But he didn’t look like a monster.

Even if he was one.

He tried to think what Dr Gary would tell him about moments like this, but Efnisien wasn’t really having intrusive thoughts. Not exactly. He was just…a monster, pretending not to be a monster.

_He believes in good and bad actions, not good and bad people._

But wasn’t him taking Arden’s time away from other people bad? Wasn’t that a bad action?

He blinked in surprise when they pulled into Arden’s driveway, and then Arden turned off the engine and sat there for a moment instead of bouncing out of the car like he had last time.

‘Okay,’ Arden said, undoing his seatbelt. ‘Can you face me, Ef?’

Efnisien really didn’t want to, but he did it anyway. And Arden reached up slowly, so slowly that Efnisien realised he was giving him time to move away. Arden’s fingers were cool against his jaw, he applied the tiniest amount of pressure and Efnisien realised he wanted to look at the bruising. He was angling Efnisien’s face to see it better.

‘What happened?’ Arden said.

‘I was hit,’ Efnisien said. He wished he were the kind of person who could plausibly explain how he’d fallen down some stairs and landed badly on a rock or something. He’d never been that kind of person when he wasn’t hunting. ‘You know how it is. A guy like me sexually assaults a bunch of people. There’s consequences.’

Arden’s fingers stilled when Efnisien mentioned he was hit, but now Arden’s thumb gently stroked over Efnisien’s cheek before dropping away.

‘I’m so angry,’ he said, opening the car door. ‘I’m so angry.’

Efnisien’s eyes were wide as he undid his seatbelt. He got out of the car, doing his damnedest to hide the worst of the pain.

When he got inside, no dog ran to greet them. Efnisien heard Isabelle barking from the back of the house. But Arden didn’t react to her, so Efnisien didn’t say anything. Arden went straight into the kitchen and got out two glasses, then poured himself some juice. He turned, holding up the juice bottle, then paused when he saw Efnisien’s face.

‘No juice?’ he said

‘Are you angry at me?’ Efnisien said. ‘Like, should I have like…told you? Over the phone?’

Arden’s face creased and he put the bottle down. ‘I’m not angry at you. I’m angry that some asshole _hit_ you. Although, okay, now that I’m actually standing here thinking about it, I wish you’d told me! When it happened! It obviously happened between the last time I saw you at the bookshop and like, today. It’s not a super fresh bruise, and the cut is healing. And maybe it’s none of my business. Except is it none of my business? Aren’t we more than friends? Didn’t we talk about that? Is you getting hit…is that why you didn’t text me?’

Efnisien didn’t know what to say. Eventually he shoved his hands deep into his jeans pockets and listened to Isabelle barking occasionally at the back door.

Was it a bad action to take Arden’s time away from Isabelle, who was always going to be full of good actions?

‘It…just happened,’ Efnisien said. ‘People hate me, you know. They should. People _should_ hate me. I know I keep telling you like, I’ve hurt people, I’ve killed animals. Those things are really true, Arden, and like, people get mad.’

‘So one of the people you assaulted hit you?’

‘Um, no, well. I didn’t know him. I’ve never met him before, but he was mad on behalf of his sister. And Arden, like, he _should_ be. That’s normal. People wanting to be nice to me is the weird part. This part is weird as fuck. But some dude whaling on me because he knows I’m a piece of shit is like…you know, business as usual.’

Except how it had never happened before. Not like that.

Efnisien hated the expression on Arden’s face. Just like last time, he was ruining it and he hadn’t even been there for five minutes. The idea of being hugged by Arden seemed light years away. Maybe he should’ve just been grateful for what he got at the bookshop.

‘Oh boy,’ Arden said, turning away. He muttered the words a few more times under his breath, a rush of syllables.

Everything Efnisien wanted to say to help, didn’t sound helpful even in his head. He closed his eyes, then stared down at the ground.

‘When did it happen?’ Arden asked.

‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ Efnisien said, feeling himself shut down. Feeling like life would be better if he walked out and walked home even if it would take him hours and his hips would hate him.

‘Okay,’ Arden said. ‘All right, sweetheart. Does it hurt? Are you going to be okay to watch TV?’

Just like that. Efnisien looked up, shocked, but Arden smiled ruefully, then held up the bottle of juice. Efnisien shook his head. The acid of straight orange juice would kill him.

‘Um, water. But I’m fine, really, I don’t need-’

Arden was already pouring him a glass of water, and Efnisien thought back to the times Arden said he liked having control of taking care of other people. Efnisien wondered if it was normal to like having someone pour him a glass of water even after he’d said he was fine.

Arden walked over and handed him the glass, then put his down on the small table where he’d put his juice last time. And then he got on the couch and gestured for Efnisien to come sit next to him.

‘Are we…are we going through that form thing today?’ Efnisien said, trying not to sound eager, when he knew he was supposed to be terrified. ‘Those pages you were making? You know about…the stuff you said you’d thought of?’

The TV flickered on, and Arden absently navigated between streaming services, then looked at Efnisien and shook his head.

‘I’m not comfortable doing that today,’ he said. ‘Maybe later. But not right now. I’m sorry.’

‘I didn’t realise it’d upset you so much,’ Efnisien said, refusing to make a sound as he sat down on the couch and the worst hip twinged hard at him. ‘You’re… I’m making things bad.’

‘I’m actually really angry,’ Arden said, taking a slow breath and sighing it out. ‘You’re not making things bad, but I get why you think you are. And that’s not your fault, Ef, I promise. And my anger’s not helping you, but I can’t switch it off just because I know it’s not helping.’

Arden put the remote control down and ran his hand through his hair a few times. He looked a little haunted and Efnisien’s chest ached because he didn’t understand. It must have reminded him of how hurt Laurie had been, maybe that was why he was so upset. Efnisien didn’t want to remind him of Laurie. Not more than he did already.

‘I have some suggestions,’ Arden said finally.

‘Sure.’

‘I want to let Isabelle in, and she can go to her mat. She’ll leave you alone. Do you think that would be something you can deal with today?’

Efnisien nodded, and Arden grimaced.

‘An honest answer, not the one you think I want because I’m upset.’

‘I’m really bad at lying,’ Efnisien said, and then looked down. ‘I guess I would tell you I was fine with it sometimes if I wasn’t. But like, it was okay last time, when we just watched TV and she was on the mat. And I don’t think… Like, I might think I’m going to hurt her, but I don’t think I’m going to- Like… You know.’ Efnisien gestured with one hand to try and articulate what he was trying to say, and failing utterly. ‘She won’t be as upset if she’s inside, will she?’

‘She can handle being outside,’ Arden said, smiling. ‘But Isabelle helps calm me down, so I’m asking for selfish reasons mostly.’

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said. ‘Okay. Yeah, she can come in. It’s your house.’

‘And my second suggestion- I don’t want to go through the form today. But I did suggest some things we could do the last time you were here, and you seemed okay with them. Would you like to lie on the couch while we watch TV? And you can rest against me? Would that be okay?’

Efnisien just stared at him.

_Earth to Efnisien,_ he thought, but even those words came through from a great distance.

‘It’s just that I think I’d like to be gentle with you, after someone hurt you like that. Would you like that too, sweetheart?’

After a while, Efnisien just nodded. He half-expected Arden to insist on a verbal response, but instead he also nodded. He got up and walked down the corridor through the rest of his house. He heard Arden talking to Isabelle in soft, warm tones, and thought if he believed in reincarnation, it might be nice to be a pet or a plant in Arden’s orbit.

Isabelle trotted in, tail wagging gaily, her hips shaking back and forth as she stared at Efnisien with a giddy sort of glee.

A flash of an image in his mind. Of him pulling his arm back and hitting her across her long muzzle. The sounds of bone crunching. The high pitched yelp. He looked away abruptly, shoving his hands underneath his thighs. Goddamn it. _Goddamn it._ He thought it might be gone. He thought it would be gone, but it wasn’t gone.

‘ _Gentle,_ Isabelle,’ Arden said, letting go of her pink collar. ‘Go to your mat. There’s a good girl.’

She ran to the mat in the kitchen and skidded onto it, Efnisien heard the sounds. He tried to rid himself of the violent images in his mind. But the more he tried to get rid of them, the more they persisted. It would be so easy to do. It would be so easy to hurt her. She’d come right up to him, and then he’d just- And then he could just- He could just _hurt_ her.

‘I thought I’d be fine,’ Efnisien choked out, as Arden sat on the couch next to him.

‘Does she need to go back outside?’ Arden said, already leaning forwards, like he’d do it in a millisecond.

‘No?’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t think so? But she can’t be near me. I’ll hurt her, Arden.’

‘Do you want to?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, staring at the armrest. ‘I don’t think so? I don’t think so.’

‘Well, I’m physically able to stop you from hurting Isabelle. And she’s not going to come near you, because she’s well-trained. But none of those things are as important as the fact that you don’t want to, and you can _choose_ not to, no matter what your brain is doing. Okay?’

Efnisien nodded. But he winced too, at the sound of a bone breaking in his mind, the delicate framework of that sensitive muzzle fracturing to pieces as he shoved his fist into her cheerful face.

‘I can’t stop thinking about it,’ Efnisien said, pushing the heel of his hand into his forehead.

‘Do you think what happened to you made your intrusive thoughts worse?’

‘What? No,’ Efnisien said. And then he stopped and thought about it, his forehead furrowing. He hadn’t really imagined punching dogs like that, at least, not any time recently. Not for a long time. Most of his intrusive thoughts centred around knives and stabbing, or just using his hands to pinch and be cruel. Often there was blood or entrails. ‘Maybe? But not…until today. Though I had a- Dr Gary would call it a flashback. I had one of those yesterday and it was- It was bad, I guess.’

‘Oh, baby,’ Arden said, sounding sad. ‘Here, if you take your shoes off, you can put your feet up on the couch and put your head on my thigh. Or I can put a cushion down on my legs so you can rest on the cushion instead, okay? Do you want to get comfortable?’

The knots in his old sneakers were stubborn as he undid them in response. They were the next thing he had to replace. The shoelaces were fraying, the canvas was coming away from the sole at one of his heels and had been for a year. As he slipped his feet free, he felt caught out at the two holes in one of his socks. All his socks were like that. He hoped Arden wouldn’t notice.

And then that part was over, and he froze, because did people just do stuff like this? Did they really? Efnisien was painfully conscious of his entire body.

But Arden was beckoning him, literally with a finger, and Efnisien swung his legs up onto the couch and started to lean sideways. A burst of pain and he froze, hissing. It was the bad hip.

‘Ef?’ Arden said, concerned.

‘No, it’s…’

‘You’re in pain. Why?’

‘I told you, I was _hit.’_

Arden was silent, and Efnisien had already straightened again, hunching over himself. He so didn’t want to be talking about this. He just wanted to watch the stupid show.

‘That side is worse than the other side,’ Efnisien said under his breath. ‘That’s all.’

‘But they’re both sore?’ Arden said. And Efnisien could hear everything in his voice that he wasn’t asking. All the questions there. It was obvious Arden had only assumed Efnisien was hit once up until this point. Efnisien didn’t want to talk about it. Arden didn’t even know about the book.

‘The right side isn’t as bad,’ Efnisien said.

‘Could you lie on it?’ Arden asked.

Efnisien nodded, frowning in confusion. And then Arden stood and walked around to Efnisien’s side of the couch, holding his juice.

‘Scoot over,’ he said, smiling gently. ‘We’ll see if this works. And if it doesn’t, we’ll work out something else.’

How did Arden do that? How did he make it so easy? He was already moving like he was going to sit down, so Efnisien had no choice but to move. Now he was much closer to Arden than before, like they weren’t two people sitting on a couch, but two people _close_ to each other on a couch.

‘Okay,’ Arden said, placing a hand on Efnisien’s shoulder like nothing about this was nerve-wracking. ‘Let’s try. Take your time, okay? Let me know if you need a cushion to see the TV better.’

It was awkward lying down, but the pain was not half as bad on this side of his hip. The side of his head rested on Arden’s thigh, facing the TV, and Arden’s hand curved easily around his forearm.

‘Just like that,’ Arden said. ‘You’re a natural. Now, what we were up to? Nadiya hasn’t had her breakthrough yet, but it’s coming. You liked Tamal, right?’

Efnisien nodded, feeling his ear move on Arden’s jeans.

‘How’s your hip?’

‘Um,’ Efnisien said. ‘Fine.’

‘And you, sweetheart? How’s this?’

‘Weird,’ Efnisien said.

‘If you need to stop, let me know, okay? Or you can just pull away.’

Arden’s hand squeezed his arm in reassurance, but it just made Efnisien feel hyperaware and tingly at the same time. He swallowed, then swallowed again.

The show started and Efnisien only half-watched it, focusing instead on the warmth and strength of Arden’s thigh against the side of his head. He shifted a little bit until his shoulder was more comfortable, and he didn’t know what to do with his hands, but he didn’t think he needed the fidget dice. His thumb was still healing from the day before, he wondered if Arden would be proud of him if he bought a box of Band-Aids and looked after the little wounds himself.

Arden put the remote control down, then placed his fingers in Efnisien’s hair. Efnisien jumped, unable to help himself.

‘Shhh, sweetheart,’ Arden said softly.

Efnisien looked wildly around the room for a few seconds, trying to find some kind of anchor, something he understood. But in the end, the only anchor he found was Arden’s body around him, even as Arden’s touch was the thing taking a hatchet to all the ropes keeping him in place. Arden’s fingers were sure in his hair, tracing the direction his hair grew, then dragging backwards, making Efnisien’s scalp feel sensitive and electric. Arden’s hand around his arm sometimes was still, or squeezed, or stroked.

And he did it all like it was easy, like he had no real intentions about it. He was just…doing it. Just…touching him.

Efnisien’s heart pounded loudly enough he wondered if it could be heard. He could feel it in his neck, he could even hear his pulse in his ear.

Arden separated Efnisien’s curls with his stroking, and then as Efnisien watched the technical challenge on the show, Arden twisted them back together, like he knew how to make curls look good. Efnisien remembered Crielle teaching him how to twist his own curls after a shower so they’d hold their shape, instead of turning into frizz. Efnisien’s curls would frizz anyway, his hair was like Gwyn’s that way, but at least they still kept a semblance of shape.

Each time Arden did it, Efnisien’s scalp felt tingly and warm. The light pulling didn’t ever hurt, and then Arden would do it again, somewhere else. Even when he did it over the section that had been hit by the corner of the book, above his ear, it didn’t hurt badly. Though Arden’s fingers smoothed over the skin there several times, like he’d noticed the bump. He didn’t say anything, he just moved to Efnisien’s forehead and smoothed his hair there, his fingertips moving along Efnisien’s hairline.

He hadn’t been touched like this – not this generously – since he was a young teenager. Those days when Crielle would sometimes let him put his head on her lap, or lie alongside her in bed. When she was in a peaceable mood and as gentle as she would ever be, and she marvelled over him and treated him like a valuable possession that she would never get rid of.

But Arden didn’t even make it feel like that. Crielle made it rare and special, and Efnisien was always aware that he had to be so careful of it, that he could never ever take it for granted. Arden made it so easy. He made it seem like it cost him nothing to touch him like this, but Efnisien still felt like he mattered. There was no place for it in Efnisien’s head. It wasn’t something he’d had to perform for, or hunt for, or do anything for.

It was just there.

It was there, even though Arden was angry and even though he was upset.

Efnisien’s next breath was shaky and he released it slowly, scared at the way his breathing was turning uneven.

It didn’t feel bad, he knew it didn’t feel bad, but his emotions were tangled up in whatever Arden was doing. Every touch layering upon itself became flashes of heat and then coolness, until Efnisien was dazed and breathing shallowly.

He didn’t understand why his eyes got wet. He didn’t understand why Arden stroking his fingernails along Efnisien’s scalp in light, slow scratches, made him feel choked up.

One of his legs bent and curled up towards his stomach, even though it made his hips strain. He felt too open and exposed. Absently, he pushed backwards until the back of his head made contact with Arden’s shirt. It was even warmer. The backs of Arden’s fingers smoothed over his cheek.

When the first tear trickled down his face and landed on Arden’s jeans, he felt a weird mix of panic alongside refusal to draw any attention to himself. Maybe he was still keyed up after his session yesterday. But he didn’t feel upset, exactly. He just couldn’t handle it. How easily Arden did everything. How he made every touch feel like it mattered.

Efnisien hadn’t realised how much he’d missed that. Which was stupid because Arden hugged him and that was amazing.

He ended up in a strange hazy space, sort of watching the show, crying even though his breathing stayed even, his whole body limp and aching but also so stupidly comfortable.

It wasn’t until Arden’s fingers dragged down and felt the wetness, then reached further and pressed down on the wet patch Efnisien had made on his jeans, that Efnisien froze. He held his breath, then screwed his eyes up when Arden moved his fingers away from Efnisien’s face and hair and paused the show.

‘But I want to see who wins,’ Efnisien said. Paul’s bread lion was amazing, and Efnisien thought he should take home the Star Baker award.

‘We will,’ Arden said. He put the remote on the armrest, then placed his fingers back in Efnisien’s hair. Efnisien felt so relieved. His other hand went from Efnisien’s arm to his shoulder, rubbing gently. ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’

Efnisien nodded. ‘I’m being weird.’

‘You’re not being weird at all,’ Arden said. ‘I just want to find out what’s happening, okay? That’s all. You’re not doing anything wrong.’

Arden’s fingers went to Efnisien’s cheeks and gently wicked the tears away, then smoothed over Efnisien’s clumped up, wet eyelashes. It made him blink helplessly. He was glad Arden wasn’t stopping. But without the show there, he was more aware than ever of Arden’s body and how it felt to be allowed to be close to him.

‘Am I doing too much?’ Arden asked.

‘No,’ Efnisien said.

‘Is it overwhelming?’

Efnisien nodded, feeling mute and meek. Yes, it was overwhelming. Was that stupid? People didn’t get overwhelmed at things like this, did they?

‘Okay,’ Arden said, sounding warm, even pleased. ‘But you’re doing such a good job, sweetheart. I want you to enjoy yourself, and as long as you’re still getting something out of it, feeling a bit overwhelmed at the same time is okay. You know you can pull away any time you want.’

‘I…’ Efnisien turned and rubbed his face into Arden’s jeans. When he faced the TV again, he felt a little clearer. ‘I like it.’

‘Good,’ Arden said.

‘Feels stupid,’ Efnisien said weakly. ‘Like… Like I’m making you bad. By association. Because you’re- Because you’re doing this for someone who doesn’t deserve it.’

‘You can decide what you think you’re worthy of,’ Arden said. ‘But you can’t decide what _I_ think you’re worthy of. Besides, what have you done to me that’s so terrible? What’s your crime, baby?’

‘Someone else could be here,’ Efnisien whispered. ‘Someone better. Better than me.’

‘Maybe you’re better than them,’ Arden said, stroking a long line down Efnisien’s spine to his mid back, before sliding back up again. And Efnisien shivered and his throat closed on a noise he refused to make. He sagged back into the couch. He hadn’t realised how tense he’d gotten. ‘Or maybe I just like you, Ef, and you don’t have to pass a test of worthiness to be here.’

Efnisien grimaced, but he didn’t want to argue when Arden kept touching him like that.

‘Do you want to see who wins?’ Arden said, moving his hand away quickly to pick up the remote. ‘You’re okay to keep going?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘If you are.’

‘Oh, I’m much happier,’ Arden said smoothly. ‘Much, much happier. Having you like this is perfect.’

Efnisien’s cheeks heated, and he rubbed at his face. He wanted to rest his hand on Arden’s knee, and then stopped – his hand hovering in place – remembering Arden’s rule.

‘Can I…um, rest my hand here?’ he said, pointing down at Arden’s knee.

‘Of course you can, sweetheart. That’s so kind of you to ask.’

Arden’s hand was warm between his shoulder blades, scratching gently sometimes, firmly at others.

‘All right,’ Arden said. ‘Let’s see who wins, okay?’

‘Okay.’

Arden put the show back on, and Efnisien didn’t tear up again, even when Arden kept petting him and playing with his hair. Instead, he felt himself drifting into some different space, where he felt a wash of things he was unfamiliar with, but none of them seemed bad. Paul didn’t win, but he got a special commendation for his bread lion, and Efnisien realised he probably wouldn’t have cared what the outcome was when he had his head resting on Arden’s thigh.


	25. Hard Place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s note:** Extremely mild subdrop, but mostly a lot of other things going on, lol. This is a big chapter for Ef! 
> 
> (As for me, I started to get better from weird 'fluid on my lungs' illness and then pulled my trap muscle so badly it now hurts to swallow and/or move my left arm/neck, so life has been *entertaining* lately, but in good news, my cat's sleeping next to me and he's real cute).

The urge to cry had vanished, and instead Efnisien felt like he was drifting, which was stupid, because he was literally lying down on a couch. The pain in his hips receded. His gut felt like it was starting to relax, which meant his gut had been tense the entire time beforehand. Possibly for days and days. He realised, belatedly, that he was hungry. He was meant to have multiple small meals a day, and he’d been neglectful over the past few days.

But it all felt like it came through from a distance. All that mattered was Arden’s fingers on his scalp, in his hair. Arden would ghost over the very top of Efnisien’s curls, not even touching his skin. Or his index finger would trace over the shell of his ear, making him shiver, and even it would stroke right _behind_ his ear, where it connected to his scalp, which felt strange and intimate and like Arden was finding too much of him. Too much of him at once.

He just kept doing it. He did it like Efnisien was the fidget cube, except instead of feeling like an object, Efnisien knew he mattered. He didn’t know how he could tell. Maybe it was that Arden’s fingers were always careful.

Sometimes Arden’s hand would rest on his shoulder and be still. Sometimes it would squeeze gently, like he was offering reassurance. Other times it would rub his arm.

The next episode passed and Efnisien barely paid attention. It made him feel like crème brulee and cheesecake, and that was it.

It felt like no time at all had passed when Arden put the show on pause during the end credits, and gently tousled Efnisien’s hair.

‘Hey, sweetheart. How are you doing?’

_‘Mm,’_ Efnisien managed, his eyes half-closed.

‘Oh, look at you, all nice and relaxed now, aren’t you?’

Efnisien blinked dazedly at the television. Arden’s voice had changed, it was almost like how someone might talk to a kid, or a dog, but not quite that either. It made Efnisien feel smaller, and like he just wanted to curl up in Arden’s lap.

‘Is it bad?’ Efnisien said, his voice more breathless than before.

‘No, Ef, it’s not bad at all. It was nice, wasn’t it? You don’t have to get up just yet, but I was thinking we could do something light for dinner after this. Can you have chicken salad sandwiches?’

‘Maybe,’ Efnisien said. He didn’t know. He didn’t know what he could have. He didn’t know why he had so many problems with his digestion, when it wasn’t like she’d stabbed his stomach. ‘Probably. Like…one.’

‘All right. Do you like the crusts cut off?’

Efnisien exhaled a breath of laughter. That was so silly. He didn’t think he’d ever had the crusts cut off his sandwiches. He turned his head on Arden’s lap awkwardly, until he could look up at Arden. He could see the two little moles next to one eye, and Arden’s deep brown eyes creased with his smile.

‘I’ve…never eaten them like that,’ Efnisien said.

‘What?’ Arden said, a kind of mock horror on his face. ‘No one ever cut the crusts off your sandwiches? Or cut them into triangles?’

‘It’s just sandwiches,’ he said, confused.

Arden smiled at him and smoothed a thumb over his forehead. And then his fingers moved down and framed the bruising and the cut on his cheek. He didn’t say anything, but Efnisien found himself drawn away from that easy, quiet space he’d found. For some reason, he wanted to apologise, but he couldn’t think of a reason why.

_Sorry for being such a fucked up piece of shit, Arden. I’m just like this._

_Sorry you met me before I ended up in jail for the rest of my life, where I belong._

He closed his eyes, then jolted when he felt Arden’s thumb gently moving over his eyelids.

‘You…really like touching, huh,’ Efnisien croaked out.

‘Oh, I _really_ do,’ Arden said. ‘I like touching everywhere.’

‘Uh. Well- I mean…’ He shivered. ‘You can’t.’

‘I didn’t actually mean that how it came across,’ Arden said, laughing. ‘Although it’s true! But no, I mean… I’m not really body shy. Bodies are bodies, you know, and you have nerve endings everywhere. Look, eyelids are sensitive, aren’t they? Or here, just under your eyebrows.’

He pressed up lightly, following the underside of the ridge of bone, right beneath Efnisien’s eyebrow. And Efnisien wanted to bite his lower lip, and couldn’t because Arden was staring down at him.

A flash of an image, and Efnisien startled violently, imagining how easy it would be for Arden to just shove his thumb all the way through Efnisien’s eye and into the optic nerve. He gasped and forced himself upright, staring into the room, wide-eyed. He could see it so vividly. The squelch and the pop, the vitreous fluid spurting or oozing out, the instant blindness. Maybe Arden would do one eye and then the second eye while Efnisien screamed in pain.

‘Baby? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ Efnisien said. ‘Just my stupid fucking brain.’

‘Intrusive thoughts?’ Arden said.

Efnisien nodded. He looked at Arden, feeling miserable that he’d lost already something that he’d never found before. It was too soon to lose it. He’d only had it for an hour and a half, and it was too soon for it to go.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘What did you see?’ Arden asked. ‘Were you hurting someone?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, then paused before gathering the energy to swing his legs over the edge of the couch so that he was sitting properly again. It hurt. His hips were stiff and it fucking hurt. He should’ve taken some painkillers. ‘Um. It would just be really easy. For you to like, you know. You know.’

Efnisien mimed stabbing his own finger into his eye. Arden stared at him, and Efnisien stared down at the carpet.

‘I know you wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘It’s stupid. It’s stupid.’

He didn’t really know if Arden wouldn’t for sure. But he had a feeling Arden wouldn’t.

‘It’s not stupid,’ Arden said firmly. ‘You can’t make it go away in an instant. And you’re doing a lot of things to make it better over time. You don’t want to hurt Isabelle, and I believe that you know I wouldn’t do that to you. It’s okay, Ef, these things happen. And it makes sense that it’d be worse after you were beaten up. That’s traumatising.’

‘It’s not that traumatising,’ Efnisien muttered. ‘It’s like…whatever.’

‘Sweetheart,’ Arden said, and then there was half a syllable, and he stopped himself from saying whatever else he’d been about to say. ‘Let’s talk about this over food, okay?’

‘We don’t have to talk about it.’

‘Yeah, I’d like to though!’ Arden said, bouncing off the chair with his customary energy, and walking swiftly into the kitchen. Efnisien went to stand and follow, but Arden waved him back down. Isabelle’s tail thumped loudly, but she didn’t get up at all.

‘She’s really good,’ Efnisien said, and like she knew she was being talked about, she looked at him. Her tail thumped harder.

Efnisien forced himself to look away, because he didn’t want to see those images of violence from before. They made him feel sick.

‘We’ve done a lot of work together,’ Arden said. ‘I’m too- I guess you could say I’m too much of a control freak to put up with a badly behaved dog for long. And I thought that meant I’d be a bad pet owner for a while, but actually it means we can now speak the same language. She understands me, I understand her. Also she gets walked a ton. I take her out as often as I can, and like, I have a walker as well. It’s easier for her to behave well when she gets to go out and use her mind so much.’

Arden talked about her like she was a person. Efnisien thought about the dogs he’d hurt and then forced himself to look at Isabelle.

Even if they weren’t her, they were all kind of…like her.

‘Sometimes it’s like…I wish I didn’t understand why I liked doing the things I did,’ Efnisien said. And then his eyes widened, he looked at Arden, who was looking back at him. ‘Should I shut up about this?’

‘No,’ Arden said. ‘I’m not very good at being scared off by things. And I’d rather you tell me what was on your mind, than hiding it.’

Arden had pulled bread out of the cupboard. It was much fancier than Efnisien’s bread. For a start, it was a whole loaf that needed to have the pieces individually cut, instead of coming wrapped in plastic. Arden cut pieces of bread effortlessly, and had pulled out cooked chicken, lettuce and cheese out of the fridge already.

‘It’s just that I mean- I like your dog,’ Efnisien said. ‘I do. But I don’t think I ever hated dogs in general. They’re trusting and easy to hurt. They were… They were easy targets.’

‘When did you start?’ Arden asked.

‘Um, I was five.’

‘Fuck,’ Arden said. ‘You were having intrusive thoughts even then?’

‘What?’ Efnisien said. ‘No, I- Um, I was…’

He felt like cold water had just been poured through him, and he froze.

_I was taught._

No, that wasn’t right. He wanted to. He’d wanted to do it. Crielle had seen something secret and hidden inside of him, and now he was lying to himself because he didn’t want it to be true.

‘Hey, baby, where’d you go?’

‘Nothing,’ Efnisien said, feeling cold all over. ‘Just… Um. It was- It was complicated, I think.’

‘Well, also, children don’t really understand that animals aren’t objects at that age. Most have to be taught. They tend to treat pets like stuffed toys.’

‘What?’ Efnisien said, eyes locked on Arden.

‘It’s developmental, you know,’ Arden said. ‘Like, a child might pull on a cat’s ears or tail because it’s not paying attention. And then the kid might get swiped because obviously the cat is saying ‘Hey! Don’t treat me that way!’ But a kid doesn’t really understand that. They might just get mad that like, the toy reacted to them. Some kids learn quickly, but some struggle. It’s like…you know, inadvertent animal cruelty at that age sadly does happen, and it’s kind of why you have to supervise kids around animals.’

Efnisien’s mouth was dry. Dr Gary had never explained that to him so clearly. Or maybe he had, and Efnisien wasn’t interested in listening to him. But Arden didn’t even know what had happened, and…

Efnisien was sitting there kind of having a bit of a meltdown over it.

‘Kids don’t do that though,’ Efnisien said. ‘Only cruel kids.’

‘No,’ Arden said, looking up at him. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I don’t know how mean you were, but I’m not talking about you specifically. When it comes to kids in general… It happens. My cousin used to shove her dog when it wouldn’t pay attention to her, like, when we were kids. Guess what she grew up to be?’

‘What?’ Efnisien said.

‘She’s a vet. She rescues dogs. I only see her updates on Facebook, she’s about the only family I really keep in touch with. But like, most kids grow out of it. They learn sympathy or empathy. They imagine that it mustn’t be very nice to be pushed or shoved or have their tail pulled, but first they need to know that other creatures aside from them exist, and have feelings. It’s a whole… It’s a whole thing.’

Arden waved his hand vaguely.

‘So… Like…’ Efnisien stared at Isabelle, and then looked at Arden. ‘So a kid could like, pull a dog’s tail, and they’re not like- It wouldn’t always mean they were evil.’

This was wrong.

He shouldn’t be talking about it, and it was wrong. He felt like he was breaking the law. Like he was trying to get away with a monstrous crime. His breath hovered in his lungs.

‘Basically,’ Arden said. ‘A parent should tell them no, and then let them know that it hurts the dog. Usually with like a ‘how would you like it if it happened to you’ kind of rhetoric. You know, literally teaching children the mechanics of empathy.’

‘What if…?’

_Stop it._

‘What if a parent didn’t…do that?’ Efnisien said.

_Stop it, you fucking idiot. Stop it._

‘What if like, what if… What if a parent said that they could tell the kid liked it, and then like…?’

Arden was staring at him, chicken still in his hands. Efnisien knew he shouldn’t be talking about this. He knew. But he also knew that if he didn’t say the words now, he’d lock them up in a vault and never say them again.

‘Like- This is so stupid,’ Efnisien said, laughing weakly. Arden just shook his head and didn’t look away. ‘Just- What if a parent _knew_ the kid was bad, not like behaving badly, but actually like, a bad seed. What if they like, could tell? And then… kind of…’

The words choked up in him.

_I was taught._

He felt panicky.

‘What if they kind of um, you know…encouraged it?’ Efnisien said, his voice trailing up at the end.

Arden watched him without blinking for a long time, and then his eyes did that dead thing – Efnisien hadn’t seen it for a while – and then when his eyes were alive again, he put the chicken down on the chopping board and was silent.

_You idiot,_ Efnisien berated himself. _You fucking piece of shit idiot._

‘Stupid, huh?’ Efnisien said, trying to laugh it off.

‘Efnisien,’ Arden said, and Efnisien felt like he’d been pinned to the spot, hearing his whole name from Arden like that, after pet names and nicknames. ‘Did that happen to you? Is that what happened when you were five?’

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien blurted out.

‘You don’t know?’

‘I don’t know!’ Efnisien said. ‘I can’t talk about it.’

‘Okay,’ Arden said, his shoulders rising and falling on the kind of huge breath that Dr Gary took sometimes.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even brought it up. It’s stupid. This isn’t what people talk about. Friends should talk about like- Um. Whatever…friends talk about.’

_You don’t even know, you fucking dickhead._

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Efnisien said quickly. ‘Because like, I still did so many terrible things. For so long. I don’t even- I lose track. I don’t even remember them all. My memory gets foggy about it sometimes. That’s bad, right? Because I know they all remember. Fucking hell, I can’t believe I keep having breakdowns in your house. I like your stupid house, I don’t know why this keeps happening.’

‘I mean it could be subdrop,’ Arden muttered towards the sandwich he was making, then looked up like he’d been struck by a bolt of lightning. ‘Oh shit.’

‘What?’

‘Wow,’ Arden said to himself, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead. ‘Hey, Ef, can you come over here for a sec? Like, just sit on the stool on the opposite side of the island? Is that okay?’

Efnisien nodded and stood, then needed a few seconds to think over the pain in his hips. But it was fine. He just wasn’t used to it. He walked over and drew out one of the stools and sat down, and Arden smiled at him like he’d done something perfect.

He then turned his attention back to the sandwiches, and Efnisien wanted to reach out and steal a tiny bit of lettuce, but didn’t. Gwyn would never have eaten something like this around him. And Crielle used to think it was cute when he stole little bits of food right in front of her, but there were times when it also made her really mad and it was hard to tell the difference because she always had the same placid face until he’d crossed a line he didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to cross that day.

‘Everything you talk about is stuff I want to hear,’ Arden said, as he worked efficiently. ‘Even if it’s stuff that I wish didn’t happen to you. That might be weird compared to what you’re used to, but that doesn’t mean _you’re_ doing anything wrong by bringing it up. If you have a lot of like, big stuff in your past, then it biases your conversations. But I don’t like you because of small talk, you know.’

Arden cut the crusts off the sandwich and then cut two of the crusts in half again. He took the four smaller pieces over to Isabelle, who was practically wiggling.

‘Sit,’ he said softly.

Isabelle pushed up into a sit.

‘By the TV,’ Arden said, and Isabelle had already started to move. _‘Wait.’_

She stopped and stared up at him like she’d never cared about another person in her life.

‘By the TV, and sit. Go.’

She bounded over to the television and sat, her mouth open like she was smiling. Arden tossed two of the crusts over to her, but she didn’t eat them until he gave her some kind of signal that meant she could. They vanished in seconds.

‘Come,’ Arden said softly.

She sprinted back to him, and then Arden said something in another language that sounded like ‘plaits,’ and she immediately dropped her belly to the ground and lay there, ears perked forwards.

Arden gave her the last two, and she chewed happily, making loud noises as her eyes gleamed.

‘Okay,’ he said, ruffling her head. ‘Back to your mat now. Be gentle.’

She went over, more calmly than before.

‘What was the plait thing you said?’ Efnisien asked.

‘Platz, it’s German. It means place, but as an order it basically means drop to the ground and stay there, even in the middle of a dead sprint. It’s the greatest order if I have her out at a park and she’s off-lead and sees a small bird or something, because she’s so bird crazy. It’s common in like, Schutzhund, which is like um, training a dog in tracking and obedience and work function and stuff. We did it for a while, and she was really good at some of it, though she was never that good at the protection phase. It’s just really not in her nature to guard like that. I know I seem really strict with her, but she kind of needs it and she’s happier when she feels like she’s doing jobs throughout the day.’

Arden came back over and handed Efnisien a plate with a sandwich on it. Two crooked triangles, because the loaf hadn’t been perfectly square, and the crusts cut off.

People didn’t really make him food. He looked up at Arden uncertainly, but Arden was already grabbing his own plate, and then he sat on a stool next to Efnisien. He started eating, and Efnisien cautiously picked up half of the sandwich and bit into one of the corners.

‘What’s subdrop?’ Efnisien asked, after he’d swallowed.

‘I don’t think you have it that badly,’ Arden said, looking at him. ‘But, ah, it’s a reminder that we really need to go through those pages soon. I’m doing everything out of order, because nothing about this is kind of…the usual for me either.’

‘Is that my fault?’

‘No, sweetface, if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine,’ Arden said, and then bit off a huge chunk of sandwich that kept him too busy to talk for a minute. He fussed with the lettuce in his sandwich, poking it back under the bread, looking thoughtful. ‘But I don’t want to go through that form today.’

‘Why though? I mean, I want to.’

‘I know,’ Arden said, and then he put his sandwich down. ‘The thing is, I also know you’re concealing pretty significant physical injury from me, and you’ve been doing that since you were injured. First by not telling me, and then by telling me you were only hit, when it’s become increasingly obvious that you were _beaten_ , Efnisien. And you don’t have the kind of defensive marks on your hands that suggest you fought back, or defended yourself. But…anyway, that’s not the point. The point is…’

Arden picked up the sandwich quickly and took another bite, and was clearly still thinking when he put it down again.

‘Okay, it’s like this. With me liking having control and power over people, even in situations that others might consider gentle or really soft, I need you to keep me informed about how you’re doing. That like- That includes telling me when you’re physical injured. Because sometimes I’ll want to do physical things with you. And right now I don’t think you trust me – or maybe anyone – to tell the truth about these things.’

‘But it’s a drag to talk about it,’ Efnisien said. ‘And I’m like- I’m fine.’

‘No, you’re not. You literally hurt too much to lie down on one side of your body. Both sides of your hips are bruised. You have a hematoma on your temple. And that’s only what I know about, sweetheart, or what you’ve let slip because of circumstance. I really, _really_ want to trust you. And I definitely trust that we can hang out together and have a good time. But I don’t know if I trust that you’re ready to…go further than that.’

It felt like a blow, and Efnisien forgot about his sandwich – which had actually tasted pretty great – and tried to understand why it was such a big deal in the first place.

‘Did you even see a doctor?’ Arden asked.

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘It wasn’t that bad! My cousin used to get beat up _way_ worse and he never went to the doctor! Like, not unless he’d literally- And even then, hardly ever. Like he would piss blood and still not go.’

‘Why was he getting beaten up?’ Arden said, confused.

‘My uncle had a wicked violent streak.’

‘Is that the husband of the aunt who basically raised you? The one who didn’t let you choose your own clothing?’

Efnisien frowned. ‘I mean- You make it sound like… Look, she gave me everything. But yeah, Lludd. He was violent as fuck towards his own son. God, he hated him. Anyway- My point is that like, I can walk, nothing’s broken, my ribs are fine, I can _breathe._ Trust me, I’ve been hit way worse than this.’

‘That’s _so_ not comforting,’ Arden said, half-smiling. ‘But you really don’t understand that, do you? Are you really that habituated to violence?’

‘I was _violent,’_ Efnisien said. ‘What part of the fact that I got beaten in the first place because I was violent to a girl are you missing?’

‘I don’t believe you’re habituated to violence against others,’ Arden said, eating his sandwich again. ‘At least, not anymore. You don’t react to your own thoughts of violence like someone who’s relishing them or enjoying them. You react with physical fear and discomfort. Maybe you enjoyed the hell out of them once, I never knew that version of you. But _this_ version is different. And that’s who you are now, right? Ef, you didn’t even _defend_ yourself.’

‘I molested his fucking sister! What was I supposed to do? What should I have fucking done? He could’ve killed me and it would’ve been fine, Arden! It would’ve been fucking _fine!’_

Efnisien didn’t slam his half of the sandwich down even though he wanted to. He got off the stool, clumsily, because he didn’t trust himself not to just grab the plate and throw it at the wall. He stalked into the lounge. And when he looked down, Isabelle was there because she’d followed him. She was large and near him and he stared down at her and jerked his hands up into the air.

‘Why is she near me?’ he said, panicking.

‘Izzy, come here, come on.’

Isabelle hesitated, then walked back over to Arden. With just a hand gesture, she went to her mat and laid down.

‘She’s just that kind of dog,’ Arden said evenly. ‘She knows you’re upset and she wants to help.’

Efnisien stood there in the lounge, and his hips hurt, and he felt so fucking stupid. And annoyed too, because Arden just came in with his fucking optimism and his _acceptance,_ and it was just too much hippie bullshit in that moment.

‘Are you suicidal?’ Arden asked.

‘No,’ Efnisien said, thinking that Arden had to ask that, because his brother had killed himself, and Arden probably couldn’t handle another person killing themselves after he’d made friends with them. In that moment it was so _easy_ to see Arden’s motivations as a person, it was so easy to know how to fucking hurt him.

He hated knowing the way people worked. He hated knowing where to shove the knife.

‘Because you just said-’

‘If someone comes at me with a knife, I’m not going to get out of their way,’ Efnisien said, turning and staring at Arden bleakly. ‘But I’m not going to look for a knife. Dr Gary says I have like, a death wish. It’s ideation, not…not the real thing. Just, it can look like the real thing.’

‘Enough like the real thing that you could’ve been killed this week,’ Arden said.

‘How are you still eating that fucking sandwich while talking about this shit?’

‘I’m hungry,’ Arden said. ‘And I’m trying to focus on something that isn’t me being annoyed that someone hurt you so much and you’re standing there trying to argue with me about how it was a good idea. Because it’s not. You did something bad. There’s things you can do to mitigate what you did. Maybe not directly, but even indirectly you’re constantly working on yourself, right? Then so what?’

‘You wouldn’t be saying that if you were Steph,’ Efnisien muttered. ‘That’s a really fucking cavalier take. How would you like it if someone said that to Laurie, after he admitted to like, to…’

Efnisien thought he’d be able to say it. He thought he’d be able to say it in a mocking, mean voice and it would’ve been so easy three years ago.

The words dried in his throat.

‘Honestly, it depends,’ Arden said, finally putting his sandwich down. ‘Like, me as I am now? _Good_. Because he needed someone in his life who supported him and it sure as fuck wasn’t going to be me. Me as I was back then? No, I didn’t want him to have _anything_ good.’

‘See?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Arden said. ‘That’s just it. No one heals in a vacuum of nothingness, with no support. No one…improves. No one chooses _not_ to do crimes in a loveless world, full of loveless people, reinforcing their own loveless actions. And they certainly don’t have a good chance of surviving. It’s the paradox. If you want someone who’s done bad things to like, do less bad things, ironically, you _don’t_ remove all their love and support and expect them to get better. You have to make sure they can _access_ those things. That’s not implying you forgive them if you’re a victim, or that you even accept their actions. But if someone had met Laurie as he was at the end, trying his hardest, trying the hardest he’d ever tried at anything, and told him that they supported what he was doing… Well, maybe he’d still be alive. Maybe I could’ve gotten to know the person he became.’

‘Your rapist,’ Efnisien said flatly.

‘Yes,’ Arden said, staring back at him. And his eyes were lifeless, but there was something so stoic and determined in his voice that Efnisien felt levelled before it. ‘My brother.’

‘Your rapist, who fucking r-’

‘You can tell me I was raped by him as many times as you like, the shock value doesn’t exist for me, because _I_ was the one who was raped by him, and trust me, the shock value as a kid experiencing _that_ , doesn’t get topped by you standing there trying to convince me that I’m wrong so you can justify why you’re so self-destructive and self-sabotaging. In my opinion, you’re angry and defensive because I asserted a boundary. I _don’t_ want to go through those forms while you don’t trust me enough to tell me when you’ve been significantly, physically injured. Period. If you want to fix that, you’ll have to tell me what happened.’

‘That’s manipulative!’

‘Maybe it is,’ Arden said. ‘But you don’t have to tell me what happened, and you have proof that we can still hang out together and enjoy ourselves. It’s not like you’ve lost me, or you’ve lost us spending time together. But we’re not always going to see eye to eye on stuff, and I take kink and power exchange really seriously. I’m not going to compromise on this. And hopefully that means you can respect the fact that I really do just…care about your welfare. Even if you don’t tell me anything about yourself. Also? It was manipulative of you to go straight to my brother. This?’ He pointed between them both with his index finger. ‘It goes both ways, Ef.’

Efnisien stood there, poleaxed.

He’d never had conversations like this in his life. Even therapy wasn’t the same. And in that household growing up, nothing had been like this. Everything was…hidden and secretive and always hard to understand. No one ever said anything clearly, except for Gwyn when he didn’t like something. Except then.

Arden was sitting there looking open and exposed, like a raw nerve. Arden looked…sore.

Efnisien had done that.

‘Look,’ he said roughly. ‘No, I’m…sorry. I did- I did go straight to your brother.’

He couldn’t even say he didn’t mean to do it because he had. He didn’t even know if he could promise he wouldn’t do it again. He didn’t trust himself enough for that.

‘It was unfair,’ he said finally. ‘I won’t… I won’t do it again. I’ll _try_ not to do it again but I might, I might, Arden.’

‘Okay,’ Arden said.

‘I can’t talk to you about what happened,’ Efnisien said, hating hearing those words coming out of his mouth, because it meant he couldn’t look at that list of pet names Arden had come up with. Because he couldn’t see everything else Arden had planned for them. ‘I just can’t. I don’t know why, but I can’t.’

‘Okay,’ Arden said. ‘That’s okay. Would you show me your bruises instead?’

Efnisien’s hands went straight to his gut as horror filled him at the idea of anyone seeing the scars there. He shook his head mutely, and Arden’s face twisted with sympathy.

‘Okay, Ef. That’s okay, too.’

‘It’s _not_ though,’ Efnisien said. ‘I really wanted to look at the…at the things you’ve written down. It’s so stupid. I don’t even know if I like it. I’m such a pain in the ass, right?’

‘Come finish your sandwich,’ Arden said, gesturing him over. ‘It’s kind of driving me nuts that you’ve had like two bites. Please? Are you hungry?’

‘I’m never hungry,’ Efnisien muttered, but he walked back over. He picked up the sandwich and started eating again, and felt weird to be so close to Arden after they’d just talked to each other like that. He paused while eating, and made sure he’d swallowed before speaking again. ‘Do you hate me now?’ he asked.

_‘No,’_ Arden said, and then smiled like Efnisien had said something ridiculous. ‘No, of course not. Look, we’re going to disagree on things. That’s life, Ef. Do you think one of the reasons you don’t want to tell me is because…it’s hard to talk about?’

Efnisien shrugged as he ate. ‘I just think it’s stupid.’

But it was more than that, and he was ashamed that he wasn’t being more honest. It was hard to see Arden’s honesty and not want to match it with his own. He made himself eat more, because he really did have to eat something, and the sandwich was good. His stomach wasn’t really protesting it at all.

Finally he finished one half and felt full. He looked at the second half longingly, but he’d probably have to wait ten minutes before he could manage it.

‘It happened on the way home from the bookshop,’ Efnisien said, staring at the other half of the sandwich. ‘I just didn’t want you to know that. And he…ruined the book. And I didn’t want you to know that either.’

A long silence, and then Arden put his elbow on the marble and rested his chin on his hand. ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Were you trying to protect me?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said.

‘No?’

‘I don’t know. It just seemed like I’d ruined something. My past is always- It’s never really in the past. I don’t mean to talk about your brother again, I don’t, but like, he only hurt _you_ , right? The only person who was really going to come at him was like, you and maybe your mother. But I have- I hurt… I hurt _so_ many people, so many animals. And some of those people- It doesn’t matter what I do with Dr Gary. It doesn’t matter what changes. Because in some ways, nothing is going to change. I’ll always be the person who did those things, there will always be people who want to X me out of existence, because I did those things.’

‘Including you, sometimes.’

‘Including me,’ Efnisien said. ‘Sometimes.’

‘What does Dr Gary say about it?’

‘Well,’ Efnisien said, and then sighed. ‘Some shit about how I should get to be happier or whatever. But he believes a ton of stuff I don’t. Like he thinks my childhood was pretty awful. And it’s not like that makes up for it.’

‘I think it’s complicated,’ Arden said, closing his eyes. ‘Laurie would never have done what he did, _ever,_ if he hadn’t been raped repeatedly by my dad. It’s that simple. There’s a clear cause, even if Laurie is still responsible for his actions. Like, if Laurie was raised with family who looked after him, _properly_ , he’d…just be Laurie. I guess some people become monsters because they really want to be. But some people become monsters because people are monstrous to them.’

The words from before cropped up, floating around Efnisien’s mind, unwelcome and sharp. _I was taught._

It wasn’t true.

He didn’t know why he kept thinking it. Even if Dr Gary would have a Christmas boner just to know that he was thinking it.

‘Doesn’t it matter to you, what you’re doing to change your behaviour in the present?’ Arden said. ‘You didn’t argue with me like a violent criminal. You just argued with me like someone who…is still learning some communication skills. That was it. Like, sweetheart, I’ve got people in my life who haven’t been through _anything at all_ who still argue like three year olds if they don’t get what they want. Do you not…see…how things have changed?’

‘But I’m still me,’ Efnisien said helplessly. ‘I could do community service for sixty years and nothing would change.’

‘Except you did sixty years of community service.’

‘You don’t get it,’ Efnisien said, sighing. ‘It’s not…your fault. You just can’t get it. Everything to you is cerebral. Like don’t get me wrong, I _know_ you were really hurt. But you know what, Arden? You _didn’t_ go rape a bunch of people because of what your brother did to you. You spoke up, got help, and like, was angry for a while, and then became this cool person who likes to help people. That’s what you did. So you don’t understand because you’re actually, you’re actually a good person. And I know you want to believe I’m whatever I am _now,_ but I can be perfect for the rest of my life – and I’m _not_ fucking perfect – and it won’t undo what I did to Steph. Or any of the others. Or the animals I killed or hurt or tormented.’

Efnisien stared down at the other half of the sandwich and then rubbed tiredly at his forehead.

‘And I don’t know how to be happy. Dr Gary wants all this nice shit for me. But I’m still _me._ And I’m a sad, sorry sack of shit, honestly. Like, my cousin still visits me, and I knew his dad was beating him up, and I _still_ hurt him. I liked it even. It was fun. It wasn’t some act of desperation. It wasn’t a cry for help. Spending time with you, all of this feels like stealing,’ Efnisien said, laughing, refusing to look at Arden. ‘It just feels like stealing.’

‘Okay,’ Arden said. ‘I get that you feel it’s like stealing, but it’s also…not that. Because there’s literally nothing you’ve taken from me that I haven’t given to you freely and happily.’

‘I don’t know why this is so hard to explain,’ Efnisien said, frustrated.

‘No, I don’t think… I think you’re explaining things really well, I just don’t think you can get me to agree with you. Like I agree you feel that way! But… we just look at the world differently.’

Efnisien sighed. He felt tired, and he felt stupid. He wanted to go home, he wanted to go to bed.

‘Can I take that half of the sandwich home with me?’ Efnisien asked. ‘Please? If that’s okay?’

‘Of course it’s okay,’ Arden said, and then made a kind of face which looked like he was sad and uncomfortable at the same time. ‘Do you want to go home?’

‘I’m just tired,’ Efnisien said. ‘That’s all.’

‘Do you want to watch one more episode together?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘Um. No, thank you. I think… I just kind of want to fit in here so badly, but I don’t. I can’t even pat your dog. And you- You’re great. But I’m…’

_But I’m really not._

‘Can I hug you?’

‘What, now?’ Efnisien said. Arden nodded. ‘Um. Sure.’

Arden got up and wrapped his arms around Efnisien before he could move off the stool. Arden stood close to him, his arms were tight, and Efnisien’s head dropped forward, his forehead hitting Arden’s shoulder. He wanted all of this so badly.

‘I like you, and I like spending time with you,’ Arden said firmly. ‘If you don’t like spending time with me, that’s okay. You keep thinking you’re like the only person on the planet who’s hard to be around, but trust me, that’s not true. It could be me.’

‘I’m not used to…talking about myself,’ Efnisien said, his voice muffled. ‘And it turns out talking about myself is like…a complete downer. Pretty much always.’

‘That’s not true, and it won’t last,’ Arden said. Then he laughed and squeezed Efnisien tighter. ‘I mean, sometimes it’s just hard when you’re coming out of a bad patch and learning that things can be good, okay? Which means it won’t last because you’re learning things can be good! Look at today, Ef. You got really upset because there was something you wanted that you thought you’d enjoy. But guess what? Just because it doesn’t happen today or tomorrow, doesn’t mean it’ll never happen. And we still mostly enjoyed ourselves, didn’t we?'

'I guess,' Efnisien said. He didn’t really want to agree, but Arden was kind of right. Also his hugs were extremely distracting. Efnisien slowly shuffled his head into the side of Arden’s neck.

‘Also this blue jumper is next-level amazing,’ Arden said. ‘It’s so good. No wonder you don’t wear colours, you’re so pretty in them.’

_Pretty._ There was that word again. Not handsome or striking or attractive. Not beautiful or amazing. Pretty.

‘It’s such a dumb colour,’ he found himself saying.

‘I love it though. It makes your eyes look so blue. And it feels really nice.’ His hands tightened around the fabric of the jumper, and then Arden sighed. ‘I wish we could spend all our time with you just resting against me, and us just…doing things like that together. But it’ll make this connection we have better, if you can trust me a bit more, maybe open up a bit more.’

‘I don’t tell anyone about this stuff. Except Dr Gary. Because like, I pay him to fix my brain. Or at least, to make me less awful.’

Arden laughed quietly. ‘I don’t think he’d say you were awful at all. Maybe you’re just not used to talking to people about this stuff. If it’s easier online, you can always text me or email me. And if you decide it’s a hard line, and you can’t ever talk to me about that stuff, that’s okay too.’

‘Really?’ Efnisien said.

‘Well, I mean I’ll be kind of sad, I think, that we can’t do more together. But yeah, it’ll be okay. But if this is a situation where we _both_ want to do more, and you’re kind of stuck right now, we can wait. As long as it takes. It was obviously really traumatic. Even if you don’t think it was.’

Efnisien wanted to say it wasn’t, but in the end he nodded. He wanted to apologise about Arden’s book, but it wasn’t really his book, it was the property of the bookshop. And Efnisien had paid for it. But he still wanted to apologise.

He closed his eyes and felt himself sagging. He was more tired than he’d realised.

‘All right, baby, let’s wrap up that sandwich. I’ll make another one for you to take home with you. And then we’ll get you home, okay? Can’t save a bad mood when you’re this sleepy. Maybe you just need a good night’s rest. But will you message me later? Or tomorrow morning? Please?’

‘It’s not… I’m not bothering you?’

_‘No,’_ Arden said.

‘Um, okay. I liked… I liked getting your texts about the blini and the cat and stuff.’

‘Good,’ Arden said. He pulled away slowly, then rubbed Efnisien’s jumper. Efnisien couldn’t tell if it was because he wanted to be reassuring, or if he just really liked the texture of the fabric. For some reason, the thought made him smile.

Efnisien watched Arden make another sandwich and sat there feeling worn through and tired. Maybe it was the events of the week catching up with him, but he felt heavy and like his mind had been wiped clean of active thought. But it meant he could sit there calmly. It meant he could watch Arden work and admire his hands and how deft and fast they were.

He eventually looked over to Isabelle – now half-asleep on the mat – and he weirdly found himself looking forward to petting her again one day, even if it wasn’t going to be today.


	26. Huge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this entire chapter in a fever dream yesterday morning and then a little yesterday night. And now I'm going to reward myself by playing some Hades. I hope you all enjoy this!! Like, daslkfjdsa

‘Hey, what’s her name? The receptionist?’ Efnisien asked.

Dr Gary looked at him oddly. ‘Mack,’ he said. ‘Mackenzie. But she prefers the short version.’

‘Oh, like Mack the Knife.’

‘You know Frank Sinatra?’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien stared at him. ‘No? Shit, is there another song with that name? It was originally from _The Threepenny Opera,_ you know, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht? Crielle used to hate me watching it because it was this socialist play, basically. But yeah. It was originally known as like, _The Pimp’s Opera,_ which I think is hilarious. But you know, that doesn’t sell as well so they changed it, I guess. It’s not an opera.’

‘I didn’t know. I presume it’s the same song,’ Dr Gary said.

‘The song only came into existence because the lead actor threw a tantrum that he didn’t have an opening song. And then it was like, honestly, kind of the best song of the play. So maybe it pays to be a diva sometimes.’

‘You seem to be in a better mood than last time,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Did anything happen?’

Did anything happen?

Efnisien stared down at his hands. Arden had dropped him off back home on Saturday and Efnisien had immediately fallen into a deep sleep that lasted just about until Sunday afternoon. And then he’d caught up on transcription work, because he’d fallen behind. He’d received an email from Professor Damilola Adayemi, with a probational audio excerpt he had to transcribe within seventy two hours. The email was curt, he could almost hear the tone of her voice firmly telling him that if he made more than six errors, he wouldn’t be suitable.

He listened to the audio transcript and automatically realised why she was so challenging. Most of the references and names she was dropping were academics from different countries in Africa. He didn’t know how to intuitively spell words from Yoruban, Igbo or Ijaw ethnic groups, or any of the others he was reading. Desperately, he’d searched for some of her earlier publications since she was a Professor and had plenty. He found her public reference lists and was able to match up many of the names and familiarise himself with a new dataset of references in anthropology and sociology.

He ended up down a rabbit hole, researching Yoruban linguistics, and then was idly looking at free language courses before he realised he had to focus.

Everything else in the transcript was easy. The actual terminology didn’t bother him at all, and Damilola had an amazing turn of phrase which meant he didn’t need to clean up any of her work by removing excess ‘ums’ or ‘ahs’ that he sometimes heard in other audio files. Once he’d gotten over the hurdle of understanding how to note all the references down with the correct spelling, he thought – if she approved of his work – he’d really like working for her.

Also she offered to pay him twice as much as the others.

He sent her back the file late Sunday evening, then ate both halves of Arden’s sandwich even though eating that much food gave him cramps. Thankfully, they didn’t last long. Afterwards he took some painkillers for his hips and lay there thinking about the fact that Arden wanted him to ‘open up’ more and Efnisien thought he was plenty fucking open.

Just not about the things that Arden wanted him to be open about.

Efnisien didn’t like pity parties. He especially didn’t like when they were about him. He hated talking about stuff like that. It felt manipulative, like he was making people feel sorry for him when they should know better.

Monday morning, he had an email from Professor Adayemi that came with a time stamp of four am. He wondered if she had problems sleeping. But it said he was approved, that he didn’t need to send his bank details because she already had them from Chandra, and the email had three new audio files attached to it. Each of them were shorter than the ones he was used to. She had some notes on his formatting and he created a new style sheet for her, because her specifications were different from everyone else’s. Maybe Professors could get away with that.

He felt a little glow at the fact that he’d sent something she liked, even though he’d never met her – or any of his clients that he transcribed for. He was excited to learn more about her work. It was interesting, like a more advanced and in-depth form of what Chandra worked on.

He’d caught up on the rest of his work, then slept again, each time waking up knowing that he’d slept for too long, but aware that he seemed to need it. He had texts from Arden. One of a husky with expressive eyebrows, one of Isabelle wearing a pink bandanna in the middle of a forest, and then one that was actually written:

_I can send you dog photos, right?_

Efnisien found himself smiling at his phone like a fucking _idiot._

_Yeah, you can send me dumb dog photos. Isabelle looks annoyed that you think she’s a fashion accessory,_ he sent back.

_LE GASP!_ Arden sent. Followed by about forty shocked-face emojis.

And now he sat there in Dr Gary’s office, trying to parse everything that had happened. It felt like life had been coming at him for a while now.

‘I saw Arden,’ Efnisien said. ‘We kind of had an argument though. But um, it was okay, I guess.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘I mean if you want to know the minutiae of my existence, sure thing, Doc.’

Dr Gary looked amused. Efnisien talked about that Saturday. He skipped over the conversation they’d had about how children could be inadvertently cruel to animals until they were raised to understand the impact of their actions.

‘Do you think it’s fair for Arden to insist that you open up about what happened?’ Dr Gary said at the end.

‘I mean… I think I shouldn’t have to open up to anyone. But he also said I didn’t have to, and that we could still be friends. So it’s not like… It’s not like I’m banned from seeing him ever again if I don’t, right?’

‘That sounds quite insightful.’

‘I mean I’m just repeating what he said back to me. That’s him. He’s insightful.’

‘He does sound like a thoughtful young man, but it’s also your choice to take those words on board, or reject them. Perhaps you’re trusting him. It sounds like you’re – at the very least – playing with the idea of accepting that he might be ‘as good as one’s word’ so to speak.’

‘And I get where he’s coming from. I guess… I wouldn’t want to do some of the stuff he does, without knowing if someone was like, injured or whatever.’

Efnisien frowned, thinking it over. He’d gone home feeling like the whole situation was unfair, but after sleeping the worst of it off, he actually felt pretty okay about everything. Arden was still texting him random memes and pictures – he seemed like a pretty visual thinker. Nothing had imploded. He had random nightmares sometimes, which wasn’t that normal for him, but he didn’t remember them, and he seemed to shake the worst of them off quickly enough.

‘Um, we kind of talked about something which might have been the reason I crashed after. I didn’t realise until like, until yesterday actually. But it’s- Like I know you’re going to get all high off the subject and I just don’t want you to get all…like you get about stuff.’

‘How do you think I get?’

‘I can just tell when you’re excited about something, and I don’t want you to be excited about this.’ Efnisien thought about what he’d said and pressed his hands to his face. ‘Which is so _stupid._ But like, I know you _will._ But you getting excited over something that is kind of making me want to kill myself isn’t always like…fun. That’s not fun, okay?’

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Do you want to talk about the something that is making you want to kill yourself?’

‘I said _kind of,’_ Efnisien. ‘I’m being melodramatic, dickhead.’

Efnisien shoved back into his chair, then pulled his arms into his jumper until his hands disappeared. There. He liked it way better when he was just sleeves.

‘Sorry,’ he added.

‘It’s okay,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Thank you for apologising. Do you think you’re being melodramatic?’

‘Oh my god,’ Efnisien exclaimed. ‘Therapy is so stupid.’

‘We could, instead, talk about how you start to regress when confronted by issues that frustrate you.’

‘I mean we _could,’_ Efnisien said, rolling his eyes. ‘No, it’s just. Okay. So like, Arden and I had this conversation… I was talking about how I’d hurt dogs, and he asked me when I started, and I told him I started when I was five. And then he was like, surprised that the intrusive thoughts started that early, and I went to correct him and like…’ Efnisien stared ahead blankly. ‘And I think I wanted to tell him that maybe, I don’t know, maybe… I mean I told him I wasn’t having intrusive thoughts at that age.’

‘What did he say in response?’ Dr Gary said quietly.

‘Well, he actually went on this huge tangent about how young kids can be like, cruel to animals and sometimes have to be taught, um, how to be good to animals. And that it’s really normal. And I know you’ve brought this up, like I’m sure of it. But just the way he said it, like it wasn’t even about me. He was just saying it. And he pointed out that parents are supposed to teach their kids differently, if they hurt an animal. Like parents teach their kids to be…good, or better. And maybe I kind of told him that Crielle did the opposite of that.’

Dr Gary didn’t react, but he didn’t react in a really _specific_ way that meant Efnisien knew he was fucking excited. _Goddamn it._

‘Stop it,’ Efnisien said. ‘Stop. I know what you’re doing.’

‘What am I doing?’

‘You’re- You think it’s a big deal!’

‘All right. What do you think it is?’

‘ _Stupid!’_ Efnisien said, then realised he was being kind of loud and hunched up. ‘I think it’s dumb as fuck, actually. But just- Since then I’ve been really tired. Like I’ve been sleeping all the time. And we had our argument after that conversation, and I think the argument was worse than it would’ve been, because like, my brain…was doing stuff.’

‘What kind of stuff was it doing?’

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said. ‘I just know it was doing stuff. Don’t you ever get that feeling where you know something is going on, but it’s really behind the scenes, and you’re not allowed to know about it?’

‘I think I’ve felt something like that before,’ Dr Gary said quietly. ‘Do you think your mind tries to shelter you from certain realisations?’

‘I guess sometimes,’ Efnisien said. ‘Yeah, maybe. I mean there’s a lot of stuff I just don’t really think about it. But it’s… I know it’s still there. Like, behind ten curtains. With lots of warning signs. It’s kind of like that.’

‘Do you think the conversation with Arden removed some of those curtains?’

‘No, man, it was like I was suddenly just… Like I just knew something I’d only ever kind of seen from a distance before.’

‘And what was it that you knew?’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien took a huge breath and sighed it out explosively.

He just didn’t want to say it. He didn’t want to say the words out loud. He knew how important they were. But those words rattling around inside of him, it wasn’t the same as speaking them to someone else who would know what they meant. He couldn’t undo that. There were so many things he’d acknowledged that he could undo, because it was looking through curtains but not like being with the knowledge itself.

This was different. He could feel it was different and it scared the shit out of him, even while it was so obvious it was like maybe a part of him had known it all along.

‘She…’ Efnisien said, and then wished he could say it all casually, like it didn’t matter. He wished he could pretend that this healing shit was easy. Maybe he wasn’t that dumb, maybe he didn’t have to say these fucking obvious things. He felt like such a loser, saying stuff that everyone else obviously knew. ‘She taught me,’ Efnisien said.

Dr Gary said nothing, and Efnisien felt like he was staring at the words. A bunch more piled up behind them and he wished he didn’t have to think any of this stuff. Because it didn’t feel good.

‘And like, she could have chosen to not do that. She could have chosen to at least…try something different. Even if she saw that I was really evil, or really bad, she still could’ve tried, right? Is that stupid?’

‘That’s not stupid at all,’ Dr Gary said. ‘It’s true. She could have chosen to do anything else except for what she did. Most parents and primary caregivers would have chosen vastly different actions.’

‘Like what? What kind of actions?’

‘I just want to check; you’re talking about the very first time Crielle encouraged you to hurt a puppy? We talked about this years ago, in Hillview?’

_‘Fucking…’_ Efnisien ground his teeth together. He hated Dr Gary’s memory. ‘Yeah, that’s the one.’

‘Can I recap quickly? What I remember?’

Efnisien gestured, and Dr Gary told the story, and Efnisien realised he’d left huge chunks of it out. Even back then, he’d told the story in a way that left out the parts that were most important to him.

‘Do you want to add anything to that?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Jesus,’ Efnisien said. ‘No, it was like… God. I mean, it started not because Crielle just came out of nowhere and asked me if I wanted to keep hurting a puppy. It was like… I’d pulled its tail, because it had been really good to Gwyn and it was kind of ignoring me. And it made this _sound._ Like, I knew I’d hurt it. And I started, um, started crying. Which is lame, right?’

‘You were five years old,’ Dr Gary said.

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said. ‘Still stupid. But I started crying. I just had this… this reaction. I still remember, I felt it all through my whole body when I heard that sound.’

‘Was it a positive reaction? Or a pleasant reaction?’

_‘No,’_ Efnisien said. ‘It felt _awful._ And I started crying, and like, I didn’t know what to do. And I remember…reaching out and trying to pet the puppy to make up for what I did. But I barely touched it because I was so scared. And then the puppy got into my lap and licked my face, and I was still crying, and that was when Crielle came up to me and asked me if I’d liked hurting the puppy.’

‘While you were crying,’ Dr Gary said. Efnisien could hear the disapproval in his voice, even though Dr Gary’s face was the same. ‘While you were clearly distressed about what you’d done?’

‘Y-yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘I mean maybe it didn’t seem that way to her. Maybe she thought I was crying out of like…shame that I enjoyed it or something.’

Dr Gary pursed his lips, and Efnisien remembered the warm weight of the puppy in his lap and he desperately, desperately didn’t want to think about the rest of that day. How sick it’d made him. How sick he’d been.

‘You’ve gone to great lengths to conceal the fact that you felt awful for hurting the puppy. Why do you think you did that?’

‘Because I’m bad?’ Efnisien said, breathless. ‘Because it would…introduce a false bias. I don’t want people thinking I’m something that I’m not.’

‘Okay,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I want to reframe something for you, and you might not like it.’

‘I mean I don’t like anything about this, so like, it fits the theme of yet another shitty session with Dr Gary.’

And Dr Gary didn’t quite smile, but his eyes did a thing that made it look like he’d been about to.

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You were five years old, and you wanted to play with a puppy that gave attention to your cousin first. You pulled its tail because you were jealous and upset, and the puppy yelped, because it was in pain. After that, you began to cry and tried to make it up to the puppy by petting it, and it responded by coming back to you and licking your face. You remained upset at what you’d done, and you felt awful. You were, up until that point, having an incredibly normal experience that is common to many children, who learn the difficult way that it’s all too easy to hurt small animals, and that it feels bad to do so.’

‘Maybe I’m explaining it wrong,’ Efnisien said.

‘You can reframe things in a minute,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I’d like to continue if I may.’

Efnisien dragged one of his feet onto the chair, so that his thigh was by his chest. He didn’t like this at all.

‘During your normal distress response, you had a primary caregiver – your aunt – come up to you, and elect _not_ to comfort you or reinforce the fact that it’s wrong to hurt animals. She didn’t reassure you. Instead, she ignored your distress response, and she insinuated that you’d secretly liked hurting the puppy. Additionally, she made it seem as though she knew your thoughts better than you did, and offered a chance to bond with her over hurting the puppy more. Did you want to hurt the puppy more?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. He was speaking down towards his thigh now because his head was on his knee. He _so_ didn’t want to be talking about this.

‘Not even a little bit?’ Dr Gary said. ‘Even if you’d wanted to see what it was like, that’s still within the realms of a fairly normative experience being exploited by someone else.’

_Exploited_ made it sound bad.

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘Not even a little. I didn’t want to. I was like- I was… I mean I was upset. I didn’t want to do anything like that.’

‘Did you ever tell her that?’

_She knew._

‘You don’t tell her things like that,’ Efnisien whispered.

‘You don’t disagree with her?’

‘You don’t ever disagree with her,’ Efnisien said, his voice stronger than before. ‘That’s…everything. You don’t ever disagree with her.’

‘So you never told her that you didn’t like it?’

Efnisien’s face screwed up. Everything about today’s session was horrible and he hated it. He felt ill. Couldn’t they just go back to talking about Arden? Maybe there was something important about eating sandwiches, and they could talk about that instead.

‘I maybe told her a couple of times,’ Efnisien said.

‘Can I ask how you told her?’

‘Um, the first time, I think I said, ‘I don’t want to anymore.’ But I don’t really remember…much about it. I think she kissed me. And then I didn’t say anything else.’

‘I see,’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien thought there were a lot of things Dr Gary wasn’t saying in those two words.

‘You said the first time you told her,’ Dr Gary said. ‘What about the second time?’

‘She…’ Efnisien stared up at the ceiling, then lowered his head again. ‘She got me a puppy. And I thought she was getting me like, a _pet._ Which I wanted.’

‘You did want a dog?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Yeah!’ Efnisien said. ‘Yeah. Even if like, even if it would’ve loved Gwyn more. Which it would’ve. Because dogs know that Gwyn is a good person. But like, I still kind of- Anyway. She didn’t get me a puppy as a pet. You know. She got it to hurt. And I remember telling her then, that I didn’t… um. I kind of went along with it until I realised she was like, _serious._ And she was trying to get me to do things… Because she didn’t really do them herself, she always sort of explained what she wanted, and I just- It was really cute. It was a really cute puppy.’

He was shaking. He wasn’t crying, but he felt like he could if he put his mind to it. Apparently that was just something he did in therapy now.

‘But she was serious,’ Efnisien said. ‘And then I told her that I didn’t want to.’

‘Did she have a response to that?’

Efnisien felt like he was breaking every rule. He was ruining everything important that had ever mattered to him. It wasn’t a good feeling. He felt too big for his skin, too jittery, like he wanted to split through all of his veins and arteries, he wanted his blood _out_ of his body.

‘She told me that I didn’t have to lie to her like that,’ Efnisien said. ‘And she told me that it was like… I didn’t have to try and be a good person around her. Because she knew what I really was. And I guess she knew, because then I hurt… I h-hurt the puppy anyway. And I don’t think a good person would have done that.’

‘Efnisien, she manipulated you, gaslit you, and abused you. Chances are that she started before you can remember, if she was already so practiced when you were five years old. She behaved not like a primary caregiver, she behaved like a predator who wanted to groom a child to be an extension of herself, and unfortunately she was cruel and sadistic, so she required that from you. She exhibited zero compassion towards the puppy and yourself when you hurt that first puppy, and she showed callous disregard for your feelings the second time, before coercing you into doing something you didn’t want to do.’

‘But I still did it,’ Efnisien said. ‘Gwyn would never have done it. And she was nice to me. She was nice to me, and she was never nice to him.’

‘Efnisien, do you think she would have been as nice to you, if you’d been far more vocal about not liking what she was doing?’

Efnisien didn’t say anything.

‘Don’t you think the rule that you imposed on yourself as a child – to survive that situation – the one where you resolved never to disagree with her, came about because you saw what happened to people who disagreed with her? As a child, Efnisien, you are _incredibly_ powerless. You have to do whatever you can do in order to bond to your primary caregivers, in order to survive. It’s the biological decree of the pack animal that cannot yet survive in the wild on its own, it goes beyond cognitive thought and the ego. You can’t make yourself food, you can’t have your own shelter, you can’t make money. You are _wholly dependent_ on your primary caregivers, even when they treat you with cruelty. You gave yourself a rule – a mandate – to make sure you were as safe as possible in that household. And it worked. It helped you survive in that household.’

Efnisien didn’t want to say _anything._ The words were important, he knew they were important. They felt like an extension of what Arden had said to him on Saturday. But they also needled at him, one by one, and Efnisien felt like he was bleeding and no one was noticing.

‘You’d already been abandoned by your parents, at that point,’ Dr Gary said quietly. ‘From what you’ve described, you had no friends and were discouraged from having them. You were allowed to bond with your cousin, but only within the framework of your aunt’s hatred of her own son. She was the only person in your life offering you care. But it was extraordinarily conditional, and you had few other choices but to learn to meet those conditions.’

‘But Gwyn didn’t do that.’

‘With all due respect to Gwyn, he wasn’t being taught how to hurt animals from a young age in exchange for being cared for,’ Dr Gary said. ‘He was rejected, he knew there was no way to repair that relationship. Crielle offered you both two completely different sets of conditions. To Gwyn, she had only rejection and cruelty. But to you, she offered a warped form of love in exchange for you performing certain actions on her behalf, with the added expectation that you had to _enjoy_ those actions.’

‘No,’ Efnisien said roughly, staring at him. ‘No, you can’t say that. It wasn’t warped. She loved me. She loved me more than _anyone.’_

‘I believe that’s true,’ Dr Gary said heavily. ‘I believe she did love you more than anyone, because it was in her best interests to ensure you were loved by no one else. But that doesn’t mean her love was healthy, or good for you, or didn’t come at an incredibly high and cruel cost. As you said yourself, she _taught_ you to be cruel to animals. And you didn’t even possess a child’s moderate curiosity in regard to that cruelty. You didn’t want to do it, Efnisien. You _didn’t want to._ ’

‘But I still did!’ Efnisien shouted, and then his voice broke. He ground his teeth together and bit down on his tongue as hard as he could. Hard enough that he thought he’d broken the skin, but he hadn’t. It was easy to make himself bleed from his cheek, but hard to bite through his tongue.

‘I know,’ Dr Gary said. ‘And we’ve been dealing with that for three years, but on its own, it’s an incomplete picture. We’ve rarely talked about the fact that you didn’t want to. Foundationally, that moment with the first puppy likely would have changed you for the better in other circumstances. It would have been far easier – without someone like your aunt in your life – to choose not to hurt animals ever again, based on that single formative experience. You had a distress response likely based in fear and guilt, but also – from what you’ve described – genuine remorse that you’d hurt a living being to the point where it had cried out. Which means you weren’t a sociopath being encouraged to be a sociopath after all. What do you think it means?’

Efnisien was crying now. Silently. And he didn’t know if Dr Gary knew. But Dr Gary would realise as soon as Efnisien opened his mouth, and he didn’t want to say a fucking word. But he also couldn’t handle hearing any of it. Dr Gary rarely spoke so much if it wasn’t about philosophy. He didn’t often just dump paragraphs about Efnisien’s life back into his lap like this.

‘I’m telling it wrong,’ Efnisien said, his voice breaking.

‘With all due respect,’ Dr Gary said gently, ‘I don’t think you are. For what it’s worth, it’s incredibly normal – even appropriate – to find these sorts of discussions upsetting or distressing. You were betrayed by someone who would then go on to repeatedly betray you, while you had no recourse but to convince yourself that she was the only one who cared about you.’

‘But I still did all those bad things.’

‘I know,’ Dr Gary said. ‘And I imagine you had to work very hard to teach yourself to privilege the corrupted and sadistic parts of yourself, over the parts that had experienced such strong upset and remorse at hurting an animal in the first place. In exchange for that, you had a primary caregiver who appeared to protect you and look out for you. Efnisien, your upbringing wasn’t normal. I imagine it seemed privileged compared to how your cousin was treated, but she targeted you in a different way to Gwyn and wounded you repeatedly. But you couldn’t afford to see any of her actions as wounds, because you had to survive. Part of that survival was – as you said – never telling her that you don’t want to do something. So you had to learn to want to do it.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you immediately stopped doing as much deliberate harm once you turned against her. Even if you found it difficult sometimes because you’d habituated yourself to being cruel to others. You still stopped remarkably quickly. I believe the day you molested Augus, that was the last time, wasn’t it?’

_‘Fuck you.’_

‘You still have instances of being verbally abusive, but you stopped molesting people, stopped harming animals. Even before she stabbed you and rejected you outright, you’d made a decision to stop, hadn’t you?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘No, I hadn’t made a decision at all. I was going to keep hurting people. And animals!’

‘Really?’ Dr Gary said softly. ‘You’ve mentioned repeatedly that you were doing it less and less even before you came to Hillview. You’ve even mentioned that Crielle knew, and have suggested or implied that it filled you with dread because you weren’t able to meet her requirements any longer.’

Efnisien stared down at his knees. Both of his legs were now on the chair.

It was true. Crielle wanted more and more from him, he’d been doing less and less. He had such a reputation at Murdock for being awful, but the truth was in his final year, he often had to force himself to hunt at all. He reverted to the same techniques he’d always used, and he entered some strange othered space whenever he hurt people, like he was frozen in time. He would hear his laughter, know that he was doing something Crielle would like, and she would ask him why he never felt the urge to do more.

He’d taken knives to Gwyn’s feet as a child. But he never did it again. Even at the end, when Gwyn hated him and stayed away from him, Efnisien’s cruelty had become mostly the odd punch and being verbally scathing. His behaviours had reduced over time.

It was harder to do what had been easier as a child. And yet it had been so easy to imagine going further. So easy to masturbate to fantasies of killing people or torturing them.

‘But…’ Efnisien said. ‘Some of my intrusive thoughts turned me on.’

‘Yes, that’s true. Have you ever thought of why that is?’

Efnisien frowned in confusion, and Dr Gary cleared his throat.

‘Efnisien, by pairing orgasms with some of the worst of your intrusive thoughts, you initiated a positive feedback chain that allowed you to associate some of those actions with physical pleasure. It likely wasn’t even a conscious decision, but an unconscious prerogative to help you learn how not to disagree with the closest thing you had to a mother. I suspect that’s why you no longer enjoy those intrusive thoughts; the positive feedback chain is redundant now that she’s gone.’

Efnisien wondered how long Dr Gary had been sitting on that knowledge for. How long Dr Gary had waited to tell him something that resonated hard, felt like the truth, and made Efnisien feel like shit. He decided to focus on what they’d been talking about before. The other thing that made him feel like shit.

‘I guess…it was getting a lot harder,’ Efnisien said. ‘In like, real life. To do those things.’

‘Do you know why?’ Dr Gary asked quietly.

‘It was just exhausting,’ Efnisien said flatly. ‘It was fucking exhausting. I was so tired all the time. I was getting behind in my studies and I hated that. Because I still had to be a good fucking student and I was in all the top classes. It’s hard to hunt the way she wanted me to while doing your final years at school. Everyone seems to forget this, but school is _hard_. But I had to hunt. I had to always be looking for openings, I had to always be like… _working.’_

‘It was like a job for you,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Do you think that’s because it didn’t come easily to you?’

‘Sometimes it was so easy,’ he sighed in response. ‘People don’t try very hard not to be victims. And some animals don’t try at all.’

‘Did you wish they would?’ Dr Gary said, and Efnisien shrugged. He wiped at his eyes, feeling that same fatigue wash over him. It was so familiar. It felt like he’d lived most of high school feeling this tired, pretending he was fine.

‘I think, yeah,’ Efnisien said, staring up at the ceiling again. ‘Every time I did something, afterwards I sort of lived in this weird mixture of like, dread and relief. I kind of hoped it’d be a powerful enough family that Crielle couldn’t stand against them. But like, a lot of the time, people never said anything. When they did, Crielle had money, she had power, she had, ‘oh we’re getting him into therapy’ or whatever bullshit she said. And I usually didn’t attack the same person twice.’

‘You wanted to get caught.’

‘I wanted it to stop,’ Efnisien said. ‘But I’m a coward. I didn’t know how to stop myself, it’s not like I ever stopped thinking about torturing people or animals or anything. And I was really scared of like, going to jail or getting caught. But I also didn’t want to have to keep doing it anymore. It was like the payment got higher and higher.’

‘Payment?’ Dr Gary said, and Efnisien closed his eyes. Goddamn it. He wasn’t supposed to be talking about any of this stuff ever, and here he was talking about all of it in the same session. He didn’t ever want to think about any of it again.

‘You know, what I had to do in exchange for her to like…notice me, I guess. She was busy a lot, and I think she got busier when I was in high school. Things changed. Also the window was closing.’

‘Window? What do you mean by that?’

Efnisien looked at the plant. Its leaves were still dusty. Maybe if he just got a cloth wet and wiped it over the leaves, the plant would be happier.

‘That period of time like, where…all my crimes – if they were ever prosecuted – would have been zoned as juvenile offences, and I only ever would’ve gone to juvie. I know that teens can be tried as adults, but I don’t see Crielle letting that happen. Yet she was kind of aware that like… I don’t know. I had a window in which to do some of the worst stuff. After that, I knew that like when I was older, legally an adult, the way she protected me would’ve changed. I think by then she kind of hoped I would be like, a full-fledged um…’

_A serial killer._

It was like pouring ice water through himself. He knew that. Of course he’d known that. But he’d wanted it too. That was the dream. It was their shared, mutual dream. Their _folie a deux._

‘It sounds stupid,’ Efnisien said finally. ‘I’m probably imagining it. And it doesn’t matter anyway because she’s gone now. So who cares?’

‘I think it’s important,’ Dr Gary said. ‘And if it still impacts you, then it’s important.’

Efnisien rolled his eyes. He felt deflated. ‘It feels like none of it’s more important than the fact that I still hurt people.’

‘That’s significant, but you’re doing things to address that,’ Dr Gary said patiently. ‘Yet you rarely address some of the reasons you had for acting on that impulse for violence and cruelty in the first place. May I remind you that it’s been three years since you’ve hurt someone on purpose, outside of minor instances of verbal cruelty when you feel cornered, frustrated or self-destructive. Even that you’ve made significant strides on, and you continue to make strides all the time. Even in areas that we haven’t yet covered, you’ll often come in and show improvement.’

‘Sure,’ Efnisien scoffed.

‘As an example, we haven’t talked a great deal about the processes around apologising for hurting someone. Yet you’ve begun to offer apologies more often, when you perceive that you’ve done something inappropriate or even hurtful.’

_Wow, I learned how to say sorry, get the confetti cannons out, Dr Gary thinks it’s a big day for me._

It just made him feel heavier.

‘She’d kill me if she knew we were talking about this,’ Efnisien said.

‘She’s already tried to kill you,’ Dr Gary said. He placed the words down delicately, and Efnisien opened his mouth to argue, and then couldn’t find the energy in him to try. It felt like trying to stick something to a non-stick surface. It wasn’t going to work.

‘Well. Can’t say I blame her,’ Efnisien said finally. ‘I didn’t end up doing any of the things she wanted me to do. And I betrayed her in the end. It’s not like she had many people on her side. And I was supposed to be on her side forever. She talked about it sometimes, just the two of us living together one day. It sounded nice, I guess.’

Dr Gary didn’t say anything, but he laced his fingers together, he looked solemn. He looked like he was observing a serious moment, even though Efnisien felt hollowed out. He’d never pressed a shell to his ear to hear the wind moving in it, but he’d bet that was the sound he was making inside.

‘I let her down,’ Efnisien said.

‘That matters a lot to you, doesn’t it?’

Efnisien nodded. He dug his thumb and his index finger into his forehead and shrugged.

‘Honestly, I know you don’t think it was over something petty, but it kind of was. I just hated how it was at the end. It was already ruined and I couldn’t save it. Gwyn was gone, and for a while, it was like I was the one that had to rescue the family. Crielle told me to put an end to it all, to his ‘little rebellion’ as she called it. But Gwyn is like, you know, object meets immoveable force. Gwyn’s the immoveable force. I know we treated him so badly, but he’s the strongest person I’ve ever met. And not in that…trying to make myself feel better for what I did to him kind of way, just in that… You know, sometimes people exist, and they’re just strong and amazing and stalwart in that old-fashioned way, and you want some of that for yourself, but you know you’ll never have it.

‘Not that it matters. Because he’s so indifferent to me now. It’s not even that he hates me, though he should. He just doesn’t care. He brings the book, he visits, and he probably puts some little tick in his head, making sure I’m not raping anyone behind his back.’

‘Does that bother you?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘He’s not wrong to feel that way.’

‘That’s not what I asked. It’s not about whether he’s right or wrong to behave that way, I’m asking if it bothers you that he’s indifferent towards you, and that he checks up on you like a parole officer.’

Efnisien blinked.

Like a parole officer.

God, that was what it was like, wasn’t it? Dr Gary had never said it before, but Efnisien sat there and realised that was exactly what it was like. Gwyn visiting and checking up on him and just standing over him and talking about his life, because Efnisien’s never mattered. Which was fine, Efnisien was the bad guy and his life wasn’t supposed to matter. And sometimes he acted up to make sure Gwyn remembered that, and Gwyn went home to his lover and his dog and his life full of friends and work colleagues and Efnisien stayed in that apartment.

‘I guess it bothers me,’ Efnisien said finally. ‘It didn’t, um, like at all. It didn’t. Really for years, I could’ve kept doing that for years.’

‘What changed?’

_Arden,_ Efnisien thought helplessly. Someone who looked at him and was happy to see him, instead of disappointed or wary or apprehensive. Someone who didn’t know what he was really like.

Efnisien had never really known what the benefit of the doubt felt like from someone he cared about. Even Crielle never assumed that he could choose the kind option. Everyone Efnisien ever gave a shit about, never believed he could be a good person. Arden just boldly and comfortably said that Efnisien wouldn’t hurt Isabelle because he could choose not to do it, like it was easy, like he had faith.

He didn’t remember what his life was like before he was five, but afterwards, the only people who assumed that about him were people who didn’t know him.

‘Efnisien?’ Dr Gary prompted gently. ‘Do you want to give me a number?’

‘One,’ Efnisien said.

_I don’t feel good._

‘Do you want to walk me through what you’re thinking or feeling right now?’ Dr Gary said.

‘No,’ Efnisien said.

‘Okay. That’s okay. This has been an intense session and you’ve done amazing work today. You’ve been extremely brave and very cooperative. I’m proud of the way you’ve met some of these discussions with a level of authenticity that is normally off the table.’

‘Sure,’ Efnisien said.

‘I mean it,’ Dr Gary said with a level of firmness that made Efnisien look at him. ‘I mean it, Efnisien. These are not easy subjects to talk about. It may be bold of me to say this, but whatever you’re feeling right now, if it’s not pleasant, it’s a natural byproduct of the ways in which you were hurt by the people who were supposed to care about you the most; especially your aunt.’

Efnisien stared at him. Even though he hadn’t walked out, or thrown anything, or pushed the chair, or stood by the bookshelf, this felt like it’d been one of the hardest sessions he’d ever had. He didn’t really get why. He was just sitting there. He knew he must’ve looked pretty calm.

‘You really think I could’ve just been a normal kid,’ Efnisien said.

‘I think you _were_ for all intents and purposes, a regular child exposed to a predator at a very young age. You had no chance of pitting yourself against her. It wasn’t a meeting of equals. She found someone young, vulnerable and dependent, and she set about methodically remaking you in the image she wanted you to exist within.’

‘Are you like, super erect over the fact that you got to spend an entire session talking about Crielle?’ Efnisien said, feeling numb and bitter. ‘Is that like, a win for you? Are you gonna go have a mutual jerk-off session with your supervisor about how I had some kind of breakthrough today?’

‘I am going to talk to my supervisor about it, and yes, Efnisien, that’s exactly what it is: a breakthrough. Are you upset that I think this is an important moment for you?’

Efnisien just glared at him. Dr Gary tilted his head, then pursed his lips for a moment, thinking something over.

‘Are you upset that I’m experiencing something positive, while you’re suffering?’

Goddamn it. He hated Dr Gary. Efnisien looked down. That was just… He couldn’t agree to that, even if it resonated. He was done being _authentic._

‘Efnisien, while it’s important that we talked about what we talked about today, it’s not easy for me to hear what you’ve been through. I’ve listened to you from a position of non-judgement because that’s my job, but that doesn’t mean I don’t hurt on your behalf, or that I’m not capable of feeling angry on your behalf. You’re very good at reading my reactions, but I don’t think you see when it’s difficult for me to witness these moments with you. My job is a role I am paid to perform as an act of service towards you. As a professional, I can’t deny I’m impressed at your breakthrough. As a human being, it’s painful to see how hurt you’ve been, how hurt you are.’

Efnisien didn’t have anything to say, because he was quietly gathering up all those words and shoving them somewhere inside of him where he could look at them again later. He didn’t know why he needed these moments so badly. He suspected it was because of some fundamental weakness inside of him, some flaw, but he was so desperate for it.

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said, his voice hoarse. ‘But you’ve got… all your other clients. You’ve heard hard stuff before.’

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said. ‘That’s true. I have a supervisor and a sometimes-therapist of my own for a reason.’

‘You’ve known tons of people worse than me, or even, even…’ _Even her._

‘I’ve known many criminals capable of repeated, intentional violence,’ Dr Gary said calmly. And then he touched his fingers to his tie briefly. ‘I have not known – or known of – many people as cruel as your aunt.’

That was the point where Efnisien was supposed to start shouting in her defence. He didn’t really believe Crielle was that bad, but it didn’t matter. In that moment he still needed the words even if he knew he didn’t really deserve them.

She wasn’t that bad.

Well, to Gwyn maybe.

‘I want you to call me if you feel like you’re decompensating or crashing after this session,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I _especially_ want you to call me if you feel suicidal. I know I allow some leeway for your suicidal ideation, but today was a big session, and I suspect it might have a ripple effect over the next few days or weeks. If you feel unable to call, you can email me instead. If I don’t respond, it’s because I’m busy or with a client, but I will get back to you when I can.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘Whatever.’

It was like half his brain had already shut down. He was so tired.

‘Probably just gonna sleep,’ Efnisien added.

‘Good,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Oversleeping can be a problem, but in your case, I think it’s a way that your body processes some of your mental realisations and experiences. If you feel an urge to sleep, then do so. If you ever need me to write a medical certificate so you can have time off work, let me know.’

Efnisien hadn’t taken a day off from work in his life, and he didn’t plan on starting now. But he nodded because Dr Gary probably wanted to know Efnisien was taking it on board.

The session wound up over the next ten minutes, Dr Gary going over some of their safety measures. He knew it was a big deal session from the fact that Dr Gary was obviously worried that Efnisien was going to go home and top himself.

So Dr Gary really didn’t understand how fucking tired Efnisien was. Because suicide took energy, damn it, and he couldn’t be fucked even thinking about it. He didn’t want to think about anything ever again.

As he left, Dr Gary’s door closing behind him, he looked at the receptionist.

‘Bye, Mack,’ he said.

She blinked at him in shock. And he already had the door open when he heard her say in a flustered tone as the door swung shut behind him:

‘Um, yes, yeah! Bye, Mister Ap… Ap Wle- _Fuck.’_

Efnisien shoved his hand over his mouth and then burst into laughter two doors down. He’d have to tell her not to bother with his last name next time, because god almighty, no one could pronounce it. Except for Arden, because Arden was just good like that.


	27. Hypervigilance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s note:** Brief use of ableist slur (the R word, which is self-directed, and Efnisien is immediately called out on it). Also Efnisien being, well, a complete disaster!
> 
> In other news it's already started to be summer here which is kind of radically too early, and my body isn't ready! Also I have too many tarot/oracle decks x.x

Choir practice had gone fine. Efnisien handed in the correct forms for the payment plan, as well as all the extra forms he hadn’t needed. Anthony said they weren’t certain if he’d come back, but were glad he had. Efnisien paid a quarter of the yearly fee, he sang music that he paid a bit more attention to this time. He realised that some of the songs didn’t seem to come from musicals and he didn’t recognise the composers.

Afterwards, Anthony told him that their choir had good partnerships with local composers, where they frequently commissioned compositions at a reduced rate for joint exposure.

Bridge hadn’t been there. Nate stayed quiet and the friendly tenor guy from last time said his name was Janusz.

‘That’s Polish, right?’ Efnisien said, thinking maybe it was rude to say something like that only after he’d said it. Especially given how many people always got the country of origin wrong with his name.

‘Yeah!’ Janusz said. ‘All right. We’re _definitely_ keeping you. You _have_ to come back next time, isn’t that right, Nate?’

Nate said nothing, just stared at the music like he’d forgotten how to talk.

‘Nate has clinical depression,’ Janusz said.

At that, Nate looked up and glared at Janusz, then stalked over to Anthony and started talking to him quietly instead.

Efnisien kind of wished Bridge was there, which was weird, because he normally didn’t feel anything about women who weren’t Crielle. Well, aside from an urge to hurt them. Which, strangely, he _also_ didn’t feel around Bridge.

Anthony handed him some sheet music to take home and told him to start practicing. He said that he’d be a possible candidate for performances.

‘Yeah, I don’t know if you want me doing performances. I mean, you saw my audition. I’m not really a performance guy.’

‘That’s fine, that’s fine!’ Anthony said, laughing. ‘I’m just eager because you sing with rather nice pitch, and your timbre – given you haven’t had any recent experience – is already quite lovely. But it’s up to you, always. We don’t have any shortage of choristers wanting to solo. Ha. No. No shortage there.’

And with that, Efnisien had walked home in the dark, clutching the sheet music to his chest and feeling pleased that someone liked his singing.

*

Despite the fact that Dr Gary acted like Efnisien was about to jump off a building and die because of their last session, Efnisien felt kind of fine about it. He couldn’t really remember half of what they’d talked about, only that it was important, and that he didn’t feel anything at all about what had come up. When he tried to think really hard about some of the things that he and Dr Gary had said, a wall of fog came up and all he saw was that. He decided it wasn’t worth overthinking, and he was just glad he wasn’t semi-unconscious from tiredness.

On the way to the bookshop on Thursday, he was jittery. Normally he walked opposite the parks, on the other side of the road. This time he walked close to the parks, and even cut through two of them, breathing shallowly as kids played around him and parents talked to each other, and dogs ran around fetching sticks and gambolling about. Efnisien tried not to look at anyone even though his eyes kept darting around and he clutched his phone hard in his pocket.

The intrusive thoughts came. Today, they focused on the children, how easy it would be to hurt them. Efnisien felt a strange frisson imagining them cry in pain or fear, and couldn’t tell if it felt good or bad for about fifteen minutes. But when he cleared all the parks, he felt sick, and realised that it’d probably felt bad and he just couldn’t tell.

Maybe that was something he’d have to bring up with Dr Gary at some point. Another thing they could talk about that would turn into fog later.

The intrusive thoughts lingered, but they didn’t feel like they crushed him as much as usual. He hated them, he wanted them to stop, his brain kept making them happen, but he didn’t feel like he was about to run back to the park and corner a little kid and hurt them. He couldn’t tell if that meant he was losing some of his vigilance. Maybe it meant he was getting worse.

What would Dr Gary say?

Efnisien had no idea. They’d been talking so much about his family lately, they hadn’t actually talked about the intrusive thoughts much at all.

Efnisien realised, frowning to himself, that it’d been a while since Dr Gary had asked him for a number and Efnisien had needed to give him one when it came to intrusive thoughts. In fact, it’d been a while since Dr Gary had asked him to check in and describe five things he saw and four things he heard.

It slipped underneath his notice. There were other things going on.

Unbidden, as he got closer to the bookshop, he remembered Dr Gary referring to Gwyn as a parole officer. Efnisien remembered _agreeing._

He needed Gwyn. He’d always need him. But he was kind of dreading the next visit. Because what if Gwyn brought up Arden? Specifically to remind Efnisien not to hurt him? There was no point trying to tell Gwyn that he hadn’t hurt anyone for three years. No point telling him that he didn’t even really imagine hurting Arden, it was always the other way around. Gwyn would never be worried about Efnisien. Even when he’d gotten jumped in Hillview, Gwyn had pointed out that Efnisien had baited them into it, and really, what did he expect?

_Just don’t it again in the future,_ was what he’d said.

It was pretty much identical to what Dr Henton had told him.

Efnisien shivered and wrapped an arm around his gut.

Maybe it would go well if he saw Gwyn. Besides, he deserved everything Gwyn said. Maybe getting annoyed about it was a sign he was getting worse again. He was getting sicker. He shouldn’t be trying to avoid people who held him accountable. That was the opposite of what he was looking for. Gwyn held him accountable.

It was impossible to forget he was a criminal, with Gwyn in his life. All the new people he was meeting, they didn’t treat him like that. Even if he liked it, that didn’t mean it was healthy or good for him.

He stared at the bookshop as he approached the door. It looked like no one was there. He walked in and pre-emptively winced at the bell chiming.

There was no one behind the counter, no Arden at the cash register.

Just as panic began to spike, Arden stood up from behind an aisle, his hair more dishevelled than usual.

‘Ef!’ Arden said, grinning. ‘Sorry, I’m doing some merchandising. And a box fell on me today! Actually two! Honestly, Kadek’s meant to do all the hard shit, but here I am, doing it for him. How are you?’

‘Um… yeah. How are you?’ Efnisien asked.

‘Oh, sneaky, see how you managed not to answer my question and redirect at the same time?’

Efnisien hadn’t realised he’d done that. He ran his teeth over his top lip and then nervously looked around the store. There really wasn’t anyone else around. He didn’t feel as excited or happy as usual and he didn’t understand why. Arden was there.

‘I’m…fine,’ Efnisien said. ‘It’s only been a few days, I haven’t really had the time to do a ton since then, and you’ve been texting me.’

Efnisien had been replying as well. It wasn’t always easy. He didn’t really know how to do small talk, and while he liked the memes and the dog pictures, he didn’t have anything to send back. Since Arden seemed to like sending an abundance of emojis, sometimes Efnisien would just send one back. He used to send the black heart to Gwyn, but he didn’t think he was ready to send that to Arden.

‘The bruise is getting a lot better,’ Arden said, and Efnisien touched his face and realised this was probably a good moment to be more honest. He looked around the store first.

‘My, um, my hips are still pretty bad,’ he said weakly. ‘But yeah my face doesn’t even really hurt anymore.’

‘That’s good. That’s really good. What kind of book did you want today?’

Efnisien shrugged. He didn’t know what kind of book he wanted. It didn’t matter. It’d actually been a while since he’d read something new, and he used to only get one new book a month with Gwyn, so it was almost like the old days. For the life of him, he couldn’t decide on a colour, or even a subject.

Arden watched him, forehead furrowing, then picked up the empty box that must have had books in it and took it back into the storeroom where the breakroom was. When he came back, he was wiping his hands on his pants.

He walked right up to Efnisien and placed a hand on his arm. ‘You seem kind of out of it today. What’s wrong?’

‘No, it’s just…’ Efnisien said, and then looked at where Arden was touching him. Arden did that so easily. ‘It was a weird walk over, I guess. I don’t know. Therapy on Tuesday was kind of…a lot. It doesn’t feel like it was a hard session, and I keep thinking I feel fine, but maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it’s that.’

_This is so stupid._

‘I’m sorry,’ Efnisien said. ‘I know it’s dumb. I’m not lying.’

He said the last sentence quickly, in a rush. Arden’s face creased with what looked like sympathy, and his arm slid to Efnisien’s back. ‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘It’s not dumb at all. You want me to help you with the book? Like the first time?’

Efnisien nodded. He kind of wanted to turn into Arden and disappear for a few hours. But Arden was at work, and Efnisien really was there to get a book. In the beginning, just coming here had lifted his whole week. Now he craved the next time he’d get to see Arden on his own, even if it was difficult sometimes and tired him out after a few hours.

‘Oh, let’s see, for a quiet, withdrawn Efnisien who can’t make up his mind… What about something with pastels? Or light pink? Or maybe like, a really nice pale yellow?’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said. ‘The pale yellow sounds nice.’

‘What about a _rainbow?’_ Arden said, sounding way too excited about choosing a book based on its colour.

‘Do you even…have that much non-fiction that uses-’

‘Oh man, do I ever. Actually we got one in this week that I thought was really interesting, and you might like it as well! I haven’t finished it yet, but knowing you, you’ll probably finish it in like a day. Come on!’

He bounded over to the natural history aisle and grabbed a hardback book and then held it up proudly. It had soft pastel rainbow colours all over it, and the font was in a bold white and black: _Queer Nature._

‘It’s probably more my subject than yours. But it’s all about like, the animals and stuff that basically like, change their sex, or change their gender expression over time, or same sex relationships and stuff. It has this huge disclaimer in the beginning about how like, animals can’t really be _queer,_ they’re just animals. But it’s good to see queerness in nature, to remember that it really is normal and kind of everywhere. I’ve seen books mention it before, but this has like, really good referencing and everything. You want to get it?’

Efnisien’s temple throbbed. He nodded while pressing his fingers tentatively to the bump that was still receding.

‘Yeah, that looks good,’ Efnisien said. ‘Really, like, really super fucking gay.’

‘It _really_ is,’ Arden said, grinning.

Crielle would’ve hated it.

‘Um, I’ll get it,’ Efnisien said. ‘Is it super expensive?’

‘It’s not too bad. About fifty dollars?’

Efnisien nodded. It was at the upper end of what he wanted to pay. But the idea of saying he wanted a cheaper book made him cringe inside, and he technically could afford it.

Arden took the book to the counter, and Efnisien followed, staring down at the carpet.

‘You… You never told me how you were,’ Efnisien said, as he got his bank card out of his pocket.

‘I’m good,’ Arden said. ‘A bit more fidgety than usual today. That’s why I’m merchandising. Tonight I’ll probably go to the dojo. It’s one of those days. I don’t think anyone at the dojo minds that I basically use it as a coping technique.’

‘Do you know why you get um, fidgety days?’

‘I’ve never really known,’ Arden said, tilting his head and looking off into the distance. ‘I mean I’m always pretty fidgety, but some days are worse than others. It’s the kind of mood where I’ll sign up for a new hobby, and I just, I _really_ don’t want to do that right now. So I’m trying to give myself things to do. There are sometimes really obvious causes, but sometimes they just happen. Sometimes it’s just me, sweetheart.’

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said.

He wondered if it was because of their argument over the weekend. There was no easy way of asking that without making it sound like everything was about him, and he was embarrassed to even think it. But what if it was?

‘Is there…’ He wracked his brain, wondering why he was asking when he was the last person who could offer anything to anyone. ‘Is there anything…I can do? That helps?’

‘You being here helps,’ Arden said, then laughed softly and presented the machine for Efnisien to hold his card over it. ‘I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true! Some of it really is just my hardwiring, Ef. Even with meds, I have days where I’m kind of going a bit batshit crazy in my head and need stuff to do. I like the dojo, because I have to think really hard about what my body is doing, especially if I’m sparring or falling. I can’t choose to distract myself with anything too easy, because that just feels like putting a hamster in a wheel. I hate that feeling. It makes things worse.’

‘It sounds shitty,’ Efnisien said.

‘Actually, it kind of is,’ Arden said, sighing. Efnisien stared at the naked book on the counter and felt kind of itchy staring at it. Something wasn’t right. He forced himself to concentrate on Arden. ‘I get really restless, and a lot of the time I have to wait it out. If I get really impulsive when I feel like this, I sign up for new courses, and then I’m so controlling and competitive I have to stay and learn the thing until I get _good_ at it, and I don’t have the time right now to take up anything like that. It’d be easier if I could just abandon the course or whatever. But my brain doesn’t work that way. I sign up to random shit and then I have to _invest.’_

‘Is that why you know…how to do so many things?’

‘It is! Also I do really like learning new things. Some of those courses and stuff have been great. I mean, I’m still doing judo! But some of them have really just been me making an impulsive decision at two in the morning. Meds helped a lot with the impulses. But I still…get them. I’m just better at controlling them. So it’s like they gave me space between _needing_ to sign up for something, and choosing not to. But they never actually remove the fidgety feeling that comes. Like… Like…’ Arden raised his hands and made rapid grabbing motions in the air. ‘Like I’m probably going to remerchandise the whole store today. I can’t…stop that, not without feeling really miserable.’

‘You can come organise my books,’ Efnisien said as a joke, then saw the way Arden’s eyes lit up in a fervid way. ‘I’m joking. I don’t have that many. You’d be done in seconds.’

‘I haven’t seen your apartment,’ Arden said.

‘Because it’s _shitty,’_ Efnisien said slowly. ‘It’s really shitty.’

‘But you live there.’

‘Oh my god,’ Efnisien said, rolling his eyes, fingers twitching towards the book, then shying away from it. He didn’t want to touch it.

‘Also, having you here and not being able to touch you as much as I want is really hard,’ Arden said, leaning over the counter and ducking his head so he could meet Efnisien’s eyes. ‘Maybe it’s the kind of mood where I need a scene,’ he said brightly, distractedly, pushing away from the counter and reaching for his phone. ‘Maybe it’s that kind of mood!’

Efnisien didn’t have a word for the feeling that came then. Weird and grasping and unpleasant, like something had clenched its fist inside of him. He wanted Arden to touch him. And Arden was going to find someone else to touch. Efnisien was generally relaxed about the fact that Arden was with multiple people. But knowing that Arden was taking an impulse he had for Efnisien, and redirecting it to someone else felt…

…He didn’t like that.

‘I’m sorry,’ Arden said abruptly, slapping his phone face down on the counter. ‘ _This_ is what I mean by fidgety. I’m all over the place.’

‘It’s okay,’ Efnisien said. ‘I wish… I wish you could do the things you wanted, too.’

_With me._

It was so weird to feel that way. And maybe it still wouldn’t be enough even if Arden could touch him more. What if he touched Efnisien and realised that what he actually needed was sex? What if he _said_ that? Efnisien took a sip of breath and stared at the book on the counter. He needed to grab it and leave. Maybe they’d organise a time to catch up. But the transaction was done and now he was just lingering.

He couldn’t pick up the book.

‘Um,’ he said, realising that maybe he knew what was wrong after all. ‘Can I- May I please have a bag today? If that’s okay?’

God, listen to him. He’d gone from being the rudest little shit, to being so fucking awkward. He remembered talking to Crielle like this, in the beginning, when he was trying to be good for her but kind of…terrified at the same time. All of his sentences so painfully fucking stupid. Even she hated it.

‘Sure!’ Arden said, giving him an odd look.

_Because you’re being fucking stupid,_ Efnisien thought to himself, wondering what the fuck was wrong with him.

Maybe this was what Dr Gary meant. Maybe he just meant that Efnisien was going to start acting like a pathetic three year old about everything, like some loser.

Arden handed him the book in its paper bag, and Efnisien took it and held it close to his chest. It was heavy.

His temple throbbed. He wanted to reach up and touch it, but he held the book in both his hands now.

He was supposed to leave.

That was how this went. He got his book, and he was supposed to leave.

He stared at the door and his whole body was chilled. It was like the muscles in his chest shook, even though when he looked down at himself, he didn’t seem to be shaking. He’d experienced a weird, full body shiver inside.

All he had to do was walk out, but he was so cold, and everything felt so… so…

Not weird, but _bad._

Was that it? Efnisien didn’t know. He felt like laughing suddenly, and a breath of it escaped him. And then he looked back to the counter, and Arden’s mouth was moving and he looked worried. Efnisien realised Arden was saying his name.

‘Huh?’

Arden came around the counter, brown eyes wide, concern on his face. ‘Do I need to call someone?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘Of course not.’

‘Baby, you’re like fully spacing out. It’s almost like last time, you know, when you fell? What’s wrong?’

‘I’m just…’

He stared back towards the door. The idea of stepping through it made his throat want to close. He wrapped his arms more tightly around the book. His whole head hurt now. It throbbed.

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said, and then he did laugh. What an idiot. He despaired of anyone else putting up with him, because putting up with himself was fucking torture. ‘I think I’m afraid to leave.’

Arden blinked at him, and Efnisien pressed the back of his hand to his forehead and turned away, laughing wildly thinking about it, his gut churning behind a tense sheet of muscle. Wow. He was such a fucking wimp.

‘Jesus,’ Arden said, and then Efnisien startled when he felt a hand on his arm and nearly dropped the book. ‘Efnisien. Is this because of last time?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said sarcastically. ‘Last time was _great_. Look, I’m fine, now that I know what it is, and that it’s fucking retarded, I can just-’

‘Don’t say that,’ Arden said, staring at him. ‘Don’t say words like that. The world is a better place when you don’t say things like that, even about yourself.’

‘Fuck _off,’_ Efnisien snapped, jerking his arm away. ‘I can say whatever the fuck I like about myself, thanks, since _I’m_ the fucking idiot who’s over-reacting. Look, I’ll, text you later, but…’

Arden walked over to the door and put his hand on it, holding it shut. Efnisien stared at him in shock. Arden had a grim look on his face.

‘Do you really think you’re over-reacting?’ he said.

‘Of course I fucking am! Nothing was even _broken,_ god. It’s not even like the time I was fucking jumped in Hillview! It was just some angry dude, doing what he was supposed to do, okay? And so what if he’s still… So what if he might still be out there? So _what?’_

‘Why are you yelling at me, sweetheart?’ Arden said, his voice achingly soft.

‘I’m not- I’m _not…’_

He pretty much was.

Efnisien swallowed, his hands closing hard on the book, the paper bag rumpling.

‘It’s normal – and take my word for it – to feel irritable, or angry, as a result of trauma or remembering it,’ Arden said. ‘It’s actually pretty much part of the diagnosis of PTSD.’

‘Well, then, let me get my stupid fucking PTSD dumbass home, already.’

Arden stared at him for a long time. His lips pressed together. His gaze was dark. Efnisien was pretty sure Arden was going to double down, and he was prepared for it, and almost relieved, because it meant he could yell about this instead of…

Instead of walking home.

But Arden stepped away from the door and even opened it, and said: ‘Okay. See you next time.’

Efnisien took one look at the open door, then took two steps backwards without thinking, his breaths shaking. Arden let the door slowly swing shut. His eyes closed for a moment, and then he walked to Efnisien.

‘I can call you a taxi, or an Uber,’ Arden said softly.

‘I can fucking walk home,’ Efnisien said, hating everything. Hating everything that had ever existed on the whole stupid planet, wanting to eviscerate _everything._

‘Okay. But maybe not yet? Maybe you just need a few minutes to think it over?’

‘I’m fine,’ Efnisien insisted.

‘Okay, sure, so you’ll just hang out with me for a little?’

‘Stop it,’ he said, his voice thick. ‘This is so stupid.’

‘I mean I get that it feels that way,’ Arden said. ‘But it doesn’t seem stupid to me at all. You were badly attacked last time on the way home, huh? And it sounds like no one was there for you. Actually- I mean, I don’t know. I still don’t know what happened.’

Efnisien’s eyes darted to Arden’s, and then he shrugged and stared down at the carpet instead.

‘An old woman, like, came over, and the guy ran away. She offered to call like, an ambulance, I think. I told her to fuck off. And then I walked home.’

‘Why didn’t you come back to the store?’

‘I was three blocks from home,’ Efnisien said. ‘You were ages away. I’m not the kind of guy to soldier through that much pain for anyone.’

Which was a lie, he realised.

‘I mean…’ _Except for Crielle._

Abruptly, he wished he was back in that kitchen, the knife sinking into him again and again. The knowledge that he was dying, he wished he had it again. He wished it could be a certainty. Wished it was the last thing he ever had to endure as penance to her, and then he would die, and it would all finally be _over._

But it didn’t get to be over for him. Because people like him deserved to suffer, no matter what Dr Gary said.

‘I didn’t want you to know,’ Efnisien said.

‘You said you were jumped in Hillview,’ Arden said. ‘Who did you go to after that?’

‘What do you mean?’ Efnisien said blankly. ‘Like, oh. No. I woke up back in the hospital. I didn’t go to anyone.’

‘So you… But then- Okay, but who did you call? Who came to visit you?’

Efnisien stared at him, and Arden stared back. And Efnisien wanted to yell at him, because why the _fuck_ did it matter, and who the hell did Arden think Efnisien was going to call?

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said lightly, meanly, aware that he was sounding like a sarcastic little asshole. ‘So you know how I’ve _repeatedly_ told you that I’m a terrible person, and that people generally know that about me? Can you like, for five seconds, imagine using your apparently _amazing_ goddamn brain and actually asking yourself who would’ve fucking visited someone like me? Do you think you can manage that?’

‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ Arden said, stepping away, his voice hardening. ‘Don’t talk to me like that again, Efnisien. I mean it.’

Efnisien almost opened his mouth to keep going, to goad further, and then made himself stop. But without the irritation and the sarcasm, he was left with himself, and he didn’t want that either.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said stiffly. ‘No one came to visit me. Except for my cousin. Who told me not to get myself in a situation like that again. So I didn’t.’

Arden took in a slow breath and audibly sighed it out.

‘Oh boy,’ he said, and then briefly flapped his hands in the air. ‘God, it’s like contagious, isn’t it? It’s like you charge up the air around you. Okay. No. Look, I get that you’re really upset and you’re really angry about it, and I can tell you’re super angry at yourself about it. You didn’t expect this to happen, or you obviously wouldn’t have come, I think. But it’s not the end of the world. I can either call a ride for you to come pick you up and take you home, or you can wait here for the rest of the day while I work and I can take you home – but I’m not going to be great company, like I said, I’m fidgety. Also it’s boring as fuck sometimes. Or you can walk home and I can talk to you on the phone so you know someone’s there. Okay?’

Efnisien stared at him.

‘You have three solutions to your problem,’ Arden said, his voice clear. ‘None of them is going to take away your anger or your fear, because I can’t do that for you. But they are going to get you home. So pick one.’

‘Um,’ he said, shocked.

‘Go on,’ Arden coaxed, voice softening. ‘I wouldn’t have listed them if they didn’t all work for me as well.’

‘But… After everything I just said to you…’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Arden said. ‘You’re flipping out. It’s cool. I know what I can handle and what I won’t put up with, Ef, so we’re good. You’ve stopped being condescending, you’re trying as hard as you can, I can tell you are. Also can I just like, say as strongly as possible, that freaking out after what happened to you is _way_ more normal than treating it like it was _nothing at all?’_

‘No,’ Efnisien muttered. ‘You and Dr Gary just have weird priorities.’

‘Come on, sweetheart,’ Arden said. ‘You can do it. Pick an option.’

‘You’ll really…stay on the phone? But what about customers?’

‘What about them?’ Arden said simply. ‘I’ll either keep you on the line via speaker, or I can just put the phone down and serve them and then talk to you again. I can pretend I’m on hold with a supplier. It’s no problem for me. I promise.’

‘But it’s stupid,’ Efnisien said. ‘Isn’t it stupid?’

‘No,’ Arden said. ‘It’s really not. In fact it’s really amazing that you made it here and were able to buy the book. I didn’t- I kind of didn’t think about the fact that you’d find it difficult. But maybe that’s because you didn’t think about it either.’

‘Then…’ Efnisien said, tired and wiped out and still feeling lost and cold. ‘Then, if you could maybe stay on the phone. If that’s- If you’re sure, and-’

Arden took his phone out of his pocket, and a moment later, Efnisien nearly jumped out of his skin when his phone rang. He answered it automatically, then pressed it to his ear out of habit, even though he knew it was Arden on the line.

Arden held his phone to his mouth while staring directly at Efnisien.

‘Hey, sweetheart,’ he purred, smiling, his voice coming through the phone directly into Efnisien’s ear, even as Efnisien heard him in the room as well. ‘This’ll work just fine.’


	28. Explanations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dunno how long this story is gonna be but it's sure gonna be longer than this because I have so much planned between Efnisien and Arden (I mean most of it is scenes and Arden hand-feeding Efnisien one day but still, we gotta get there first. Who knew a story about mostly nonsexual BDSM would be the slowest slow burn to ever slowly burn?) 
> 
> Hope you're all going well in slowburn town! (Happy Halloween!)

He thought he’d be fine, walking home listening to Arden on the phone. But he was terrified. He could hear it in his breathing, he knew Arden could hear it too.

‘It’s so stupid,’ he said, feeling like that was the refrain for the day.

‘I promise you it’s not,’ Arden said. ‘Why does it surprise you so much to be so afraid of this, baby?’

‘Because…’

He thought about how Arden wanted him to open up more, even as his eyes flickered all around the street like he was trying to see everything at once.

‘Arden, how much do I have to tell you before we can look at like, that form? Those pages? When will you know?’

There was a soft laugh over the phone and then a muffled thumping sound. ‘Ah shit, that was a whole stack of books. Oh well! Um, hm, sweetheart. Let me think. How about…we just talk for a bit and maybe you can tell me some things? I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to recap what happened last week while you’re walking home. So maybe not that. You seem really surprised to be scared though.’

‘It’s never really been like this before,’ Efnisien admitted. He stared down at his shoes on the pavement, then edged sideways to make sure the woman in a yellow business suit could get by him easily. He didn’t even think about shoving her in front of a car. But he hadn’t had thoughts like that in a long time. He bit into his bottom lip as he looked up again, he wondered if Dr Gary would want to know things like that.

‘Really? Even, even after Hillview? You said you got jumped, you mean beaten, right?’

‘Yeah, by like six people,’ Efnisien said, laughing softly. ‘It was my fault. I talked a big fucking game. I thought I was the meanest one there.’

‘And you weren’t afraid after?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said slowly. ‘Not really. I mean I just didn’t think about it. I had to go back. I think I was scared, but I couldn’t go anywhere else. My parents were never going to like… Like there were some conditions in my life and if I wanted those things, I had to be in Hillview. My cousin he… He said he’d only see me if I stayed there, until Hillview said I was ready to be an outpatient. And he was the only person who ever came to see me. So I had to be in Hillview. I couldn’t be scared. It’s kind of a luxury isn’t it? To be afraid of something.’

Efnisien twitched when he heard a car’s engine fire too loudly from a street nearby, then shuddered.

‘Though it doesn’t feel like a fucking luxury right now.’

‘I think I get it,’ Arden said quietly. ‘Sometimes fear can make things impossible. And you can’t have things be impossible when you’re trying to survive as it is. So the fear has to go. Or at least, the ability to focus on it and do anything about it has to go.’

‘You sound like you know a bit about that.’

‘I maybe know a bit about that,’ Arden chirped, then laughed. ‘The fear never goes away, it just finds other ways to speak up. Like, fuck, migraines or some shit.’

_Or stomach aches._

Efnisien’s hand went to his gut, he frowned.

‘How often did your cousin come to see you?’ Arden asked.

‘Once a month. Sometimes less,’ Efnisien said. ‘But I hurt him. And I have this way of getting around him, so I still hurt him. He has no reason to believe I haven’t like, assaulted people, in the last three years…’

Efnisien looked around to make sure no one was watching him, but no one was. He didn’t cut through the parks this time, but stayed on the path close to them, near the people, the children, the animals. For a while, he heard nothing but his own breathing and the sound of Arden slotting books into a bookshelf, one after the other. Small little thuds.

 _I miss you,_ Efnisien thought, wishing he could do something stupid like lay his head on Arden’s knee.

‘Can I…?’ Efnisien swallowed and his throat was dry. He really needed to get a water bottle or something. ‘Can I see you on the weekend maybe? Or…soon?’

‘Yeah, baby. I’d like that. Is it hard for you to ask to see me?’

‘I _just_ saw you,’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t want to- Dr Gary warned me that if my life is empty, I might expect too much from you, and hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you.’

Arden was silent and Efnisien crossed the road and realised he was getting closer to the street where that guy had come at him. He stopped walking and stood there, it would be hilarious if he…couldn’t actually go home anymore, and now he’d have to live here, on this random spot by the side of a road. Maybe he could get a tent.

‘I really like spending time with you,’ Arden sighed, like it was a fact that he even enjoyed saying.

‘Even after just then?’

‘Baby, I was in a mood too, I don’t know if you noticed. It wasn’t just you.’

‘But I got angry.’

‘Well, you’re allowed to get angry,’ Arden said, then sucked in a breath that Efnisien heard over the phone. ‘I wasn’t telling you not to be angry with me! I just didn’t want you to be condescending. You’re allowed to get angry, Ef, but maybe you feel like you can’t be angry?’

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ Efnisien said. ‘And I did.’

‘No, you didn’t. You spoke to me with zero respect, in a condescending fashion. You _tried_ to hurt me. I’m not that easy to hurt. But I’m also not going to let people try to do it in the first place. It’s like…if someone pushes me over, I can fall in a way that means I don’t break anything. But am I going to encourage someone to keep pushing me over? Hell no. But Ef, you’re allowed to be mad at me. We can talk about that if you like.’

‘No, it’s just- I think it’s also my fault. I keep thinking you know more than you do. I’ve never had to explain my life to people before. Outside of Dr Gary, and no one ever wanted to know before him. I’ve never had… um.’ Efnisien laughed. ‘You know, I’ve never had a friend. Or someone to like- I don’t know. I don’t know what friends talk about.’

‘You’re doing a great job,’ Arden said warmly. ‘How’s getting home going?’

‘I got stuck,’ Efnisien said. ‘I’m just standing here.’

‘You want to keep going? You’ve done really well so far. If anything happens, I’ll come for you. I’ll make sure you’re okay.’

‘But he might have a gun,’ Efnisien said, despite the way Arden’s words made him feel. ‘Judo won’t win against guns.’

‘I mean we can play the ‘he might have a gun’ game, but then honestly, sweetheart, you’ll be dead, I’ll be super sad, but at least you won’t be so scared anymore, right? Silver lining right? _Right?’_

Efnisien started laughing in spite of himself, a small, stuttery sound that surprised even him. Arden laughed too.

Efnisien made himself start walking again.

‘So you were saying you thought something was your fault?’ Arden said.

‘I haven’t had a ton of people in my life,’ Efnisien said. ‘I mean you know I’ve hurt people, but honestly, it’s…complicated. You don’t have much context, I can’t expect you to like, remember…everything. Especially on a day where you’d already warned me you were unfocused.’

‘You said once, this thing that’s stayed with me actually, ever since. You were talking about the fact that you were poor but didn’t know you were poor, because you used to be rich. You told me your cousin was a millionaire. And I asked you if your family cut you off because you’d done something too bad for them to take. Do you remember what you said?’

Efnisien’s cheeks burned, but he nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said, roughly.

‘You said you got cut off because you did something _good._ And, I have to say, that one- Efnisien, your family… I’ve been trying to understand ever since. Why did they do that?’

‘Because they’re- Because… I guess… Well. They’re kind of criminals. Not in a mafia way, just in a- Like- Rich, corrupted…’

Efnisien winced.

‘This makes them sound really bad,’ he said. ‘But Crielle really did give me everything. Like food and clothing and stuff. She looked after me.’

‘But she didn’t want you to be good,’ Arden said slowly. ‘I’m kind of confused like, I don’t know, did you talk to the cops or something? Or…’

‘I tried to save my cousin’s life,’ Efnisien said. ‘Sort of. I mean they weren’t going to literally murder him. I think. Actually there was maybe a chance-’ Arden sucked in a sudden, shocked breath and Efnisien panicked. ‘ _No_ , no, no, there wasn’t, I swear. Actually it was fine. Things were fine. I just did something stupid. It wasn’t even good. I was joking.’

He listened to that whole run of sentences and stared up at the sky. It was cloudy. He’d barely noticed how cloudy it was until now. That had happened fast. Was it going to rain?

‘God,’ he muttered. ‘No, hang on. Dr Gary would tell you that what I did was a good thing. And maybe they would have tried to kill my cousin, I don’t know. They sure talked about it sometimes, but it’s hard to tell like, what’s real and what’s just them being mad that day.’

‘You said you used to hurt your cousin,’ Arden said.

‘I did,’ Efnisien said. ‘But there’s hurting someone, and then there’s knowing that he’s going to die if he doesn’t get a chance to leave. I just made sure he had that chance. Other people were helping. His dumb stupid boyfriend helped him more. I guess I just made sure that my aunt couldn’t like- I made sure his mother couldn’t… I don’t know. I just made it harder for her to win the court case. That’s all.’

‘You know, I’ve really wanted to look up your name,’ Arden said. ‘On the internet. Ever since I’ve met you. Rich boy who’s poor and doesn’t seem to know how to live in the world. I don’t mean offense by that, just… Sometimes it seems you’re still getting used to things. You have a rough history, went to Hillview. It’s obvious you come from like, money and education and etiquette classes. I figured you’d be on social media, or at least have an internet presence.’

‘I hate social media,’ Efnisien said tiredly. ‘So fucking much.’

‘I just post pictures of Isabelle, so I mostly have a pretty good time. She’s got her own Instagram account.’

‘Of course she does. Also you don’t just post pictures of Isabelle. You’re- You’re on Youtube.’

‘Yeah, but that doesn’t count. That’s different. It’s mostly educational.’

Efnisien sometimes went through periods where he wanted to look Arden up on Youtube, but it was surprisingly easy not to. He didn’t want to have a bad freak-out about it all, and Arden had asked him not to. But the curiosity was there, because Arden was _Arden,_ and he’d had plenty of opportunities to really hurt Efnisien by now, and maybe he was just super patient, or maybe he was not really wanting to be like Berdella or the rest.

‘Hey,’ Arden said softly. ‘Have you ever noticed how the way you tell me things about yourself, it’s always super guarded. Like, it’s fragments, or it’s elusive, like glimpsing an animal in the dark. I have a good memory, so I’ve remembered most of it, I think. But you tell bits and pieces of your story in a way where it’s like you’re almost hoping people will forget. Do you think you do that?’

Efnisien could see it now that Arden had mentioned it. It was so tempting to say it was because his past was unimportant, that it didn’t matter. But he was going to therapy twice a week for his fucking past, to make sure he didn’t drag it into the future with him.

He turned down a street and rubbed at the back of his neck. He didn’t like this walk, and desperate to think of anything else, he focused on what Arden was saying.

‘Um, yeah. It’s hard to talk about those things. Feels like I shouldn’t talk about it, with all the shit I did, sometimes. But also it’s like- I don’t know. You went through so much. My story is about how I hurt tons of people.’

‘Yeah, you told me that _straight away,_ in fact that’s the thing you’re clearest and most transparent about. But your story is also about a lot of other things,’ Arden said. ‘You told me yourself that your aunt encouraged you to hurt an animal, right? She did that? Did she…? Did she encourage you to hurt animals in general?’

‘Mmhm.’ The syllables came out tight and almost angry. But he had gooseflesh all over his arms. ‘I guess.’

‘Well, she either did or she didn’t. Can you give me a yes or no answer, sweetheart?’

‘You can probably figure it out,’ Efnisien said.

‘But I don’t want to. I want to be sure. These are big subjects. I know you like to imply things a lot of the time, but this stuff is important to me. I know it’s important to you, but it’s also important to me.’

Efnisien wanted to ask him why, but focused on what Arden wanted, instead.

‘Yes,’ he said roughly. ‘She did. And people.’

‘So the things you did. The things you talk about doing. Hurting and killing animals. Hurting and molesting people. They were things she knew about?’

‘Oh yeah,’ Efnisien said, half-smiling. ‘She knew.’

‘And she never tried to discourage you?’

Efnisien couldn’t help the short bark of laughter, because goddamn, it was so funny when people thought Crielle was a regular person. She was a goddess, a demoness, a force of nature. She was amazing and beautiful and ruthless. He’d always loved that about her. She was nothing like a regular person.

‘She always encouraged you?’ Arden said.

‘She wanted me to do way worse,’ Efnisien said, then realised he was looking around a _lot._ He could almost see the place he was jumped from here. Ridiculously, he tried to look for the book, or any of the pages. He couldn’t see them. But he also couldn’t see any guy waiting for him, waiting to hurt him. He looked everywhere, his breath high in his lungs, his jaw tight.

‘Worse?’ Arden said, his voice smaller.

Efnisien never thought he’d have this conversation with anyone at all, let alone Dr Gary, and especially not Arden. Hearing the way Arden’s voice changed, after he’d been so cavalier about everything, including his own story, made something strange happen in Efnisien’s chest.

‘It’s okay,’ Efnisien said quietly. ‘It sounds worse than it is, and I’m probably telling it badly. I mean, she’s gone now, right? I don’t have anything to do with her and I haven’t for three years, and she doesn’t want anything to do with me. I haven’t hurt people for a long time, Arden.’

‘That’s not- That’s not what I… Yeah, okay. Okay, Ef.’

‘I’m on the street where it happened,’ Efnisien said. The words just kind of came out of him, he hadn’t even been planning to say it. He wasn’t going to mention it ever again.

‘Oh wow, so you’re really close to home. You’re amazing.’

An odd, warm flush, Efnisien almost coughed. He wrapped his arm around his torso. His head throbbed where the book hit him. But what he remembered was the way the guy stared at him before he’d hit him at all, like Lludd stared at Gwyn, like Lludd stared at Efnisien sometimes. Or that look in Gwyn’s eyes before Gwyn had straight up tried to kill him.

‘I baited him,’ Efnisien said, walking quicker now. Wanting to get this part over and done with. He’d have to find another route and just…hope that no one else ever recognised him. ‘I baited him, Arden. I talked shit about his sister. I made it happen. He might have done it anyway, but I made it happen. I made sure.’

‘Because you thought you deserved it.’

‘Sometimes none of it feels real,’ Efnisien said. ‘What I did. I keep thinking it’s because I’m trying to escape the guilt. And like, I don’t _want_ to. Because I know if I felt guilt, or like, really bad about what happened, I’d be _way_ less likely to hurt people. You know? It’d be an amazing deterrent for a start. But instead I feel so empty about it all. Dr Gary is kind of… He doesn’t seem too worried about it. I think he thinks it’s coming for me anyway. Like a mine I’m going to step on in my own head one day.’

Efnisien imagined his brain blowing up with such force that his skull exploded.

‘Don’t you think that…you thinking you deserve to die for what you did, is kind of guilt motivated?’ Arden said.

Efnisien couldn’t really focus on the question. He was distracted, he hated it.

‘He tore all the pages out of your book,’ Efnisien said. ‘Almost all of them, I dunno, not all of them. Like half of them. And then he threw the book at my head. That’s- That’s why I had the lump there. That you felt. And- And I was going to pick it up, after, like, really I was. But… But it hurt too much to like, to like bend down that way. So I had to leave it. It was like, littering the street, and I couldn’t even um, clean it up. Or take- Take the rest of it home.’

Arden didn’t say anything, but Efnisien could hear Arden’s breathing over the phone, which was kind of nice. He was still there. Efnisien still felt pretty fucking terrible. It was weirdly easier to talk about this stuff when he already felt bad. Like what were words gonna do? How could they be worse than how he felt, scanning every fucking inch of every surface around him, looking for random people with guns or knives or fists?

He probably looked like a drug addict with how twitchy he was.

‘I think wanting to die is a kind of escapism,’ Efnisien said. ‘It’d be nice to think it was guilt, but like, sometimes it gets hard and I don’t want to do it anymore. That’s not guilt. But the whole- The deserving thing is just objective, you know. That’s just a fact. Even that’s not guilt.’

‘Is that what Dr Gary says?’

‘Dr Gary’s job is literally to try and stop the worst people out there from being the worst people out there, and telling his patients that they’re beyond hope is like, probably not actually helpful in his job. So like, no, it’s not what he says. But I don’t know if he’s right.’

‘Boo,’ Arden cried down the phone, startling Efnisien. ‘Boo! Such pessimism! Efnisien, you have a spiderweb of _nonsense_ around some of this stuff. But I guess if I’m your first friend, no one’s been around to tell you that. I mean you can be a pessimist! That’s actually fine, and kind of adorable sometimes, because you get this little grumpy face… _Anyway,_ Ef, you don’t _objectively_ deserve to die. That’s such a cruel thing to say to yourself. Maybe you’re so scared of feeling your actual feelings around what you did, because you already feel terrible, and your brain is like… _worried.’_

Efnisien didn’t mean to laugh. He really didn’t. ‘Worried, huh?’

‘Hey, what are you doing this weekend?’

‘Um… Like, I should probably go to rehearsal on Saturday night, but I’m free, um, the rest of the time. I might have to catch up on some transcription, but I get a lot of free time because I transcribe fast.’

‘You wanna see me? I’m fun to be around. Even if we argue, I’m still fun, you can’t deny it.’

‘I mean if that’s the hill you want to die on,’ Efnisien said, smiling in spite of himself.

To his surprise, he was one street away from his apartment building, and he turned around and stared at the street behind him. Because for a whole two or three minutes, he’d forgotten to watch everything.

The conversation had worked. He could see his apartment. He’d never been so fucking glad to see it in his life.

‘I was thinking,’ Arden said, drawing the words out. ‘We could look at that form together, okay?’

‘We can?’ Efnisien said, a burst of something bright leaping in his chest. ‘Really? You mean- I- We can?’

‘You were _so_ good,’ Arden said. ‘After the day you’ve had and everything. And this has been great for me, honestly. I’ve been sitting here sorting out some paperwork, which Kadek has been avoiding for months. Like months.’

‘What’s he like?’ Efnisien said. He was still tingly at the fact that he was going to see Arden on the weekend, and they were going to go through the form. He knew he was meant to feel scared – he kind of did, a little – but his curiosity had well and truly taken over. He just knew that Arden had probably thought of more ways he could touch Efnisien that probably wouldn’t be about sex, and Efnisien couldn’t think of any reason not to be curious about that.

‘Kadek? Um. Super laidback, but also more ambitious than you’d think from the way he is around friends. He’s shorter than I am, a really good cook – as long as you like spice – and he likes sports. Like, so much. He used to play football and cricket, that kind of thing. If you came to the bookshop on weekends you’d see him. He’s really good with the customers, in this laconic, wry way that makes everyone feel special that he’s giving _them_ attention. Some customers come specifically on the days he’s in because he’s just like that. He’s great.’

Efnisien wondered how Arden would describe him to other people, but the idea was terrifying. He didn’t want to be described to anyone.

‘I like seeing you,’ Efnisien said.

It wasn’t until he’d said the words that he realised how they sounded. What he’d meant was that he liked seeing Arden over Kadek, which was also embarrassing as hell. But instead it just sounded like-

Efnisien almost stopped walking, his whole face burning.

‘I mean-’ he said quickly, before stalling out.

‘I like seeing you too, baby,’ Arden purred.

‘Stop that,’ Efnisien said. _I’m in public._

‘No? You don’t like it when I talk like this? Come on, sweetheart. I think you like it when I talk to you like this.’

‘Jesus fucking fuck, Arden.’

‘Mm, I should have hugged you today. I’m missing the way you feel.’

Efnisien made a sound that was supposed to be a laugh, or a groan, but came out as some alien thing that might’ve had the tail end of a squeak in it.

Arden burst into laughter. ‘You are _so_ much fun.’

‘You’re _so_ fucking rude,’ Efnisien muttered, walking into his building and getting onto the elevator.

He knew he should hang up. He could’ve hung up before, because as soon as he saw his apartment he realised he was basically home, he was going to be fine. Even if he wasn’t going to be fine. Even if there was some serial killer waiting in his apartment to kill him and skin him or some shit, he was no longer some scared child unable to walk back to his apartment. He’d made it.

‘About the form,’ Arden said, his tone becoming more businesslike. ‘Don’t be surprised if it takes a while to go through. And Efnisien, you have to be honest with me, even if it’s really hard or you feel embarrassed. You have to be honest like you were today, okay? I’m not saying that just for my sake, but for yours. I might ask you if you like the idea of something, and if you don’t know, just say you don’t know, okay?’

‘But I probably won’t know about any of it.’

‘I don’t think that’s true,’ Arden said, his voice softening. ‘I think there’s going to be some things on there that are a pretty sure thing. But even if you don’t know about any of it, that’s okay!’

‘I’m home now,’ Efnisien said, staring around his apartment. He slid the book out of its paper bag and stroked the spine a few times. He’d made it. And he had a new book. He was going to start reading it straight away. ‘Am I holding you up?’

‘No, Ef, this has been nice. I usually hate talking on the phone, but I’d make an exception for you. What are you going to do now? Eat something? Get some rest?’

‘Um,’ Efnisien said. He wasn’t hungry, but now that Arden had mentioned eating, Efnisien knew he really should eat something. He opened the cupboard door and stared inside, and then brought out a cup of noodles. He hadn’t had something like that in a while. It didn’t really turn his stomach, though he imagined Crielle telling him that it was bad for him, while passing him some salad he didn’t really give a shit about. ‘I could eat something.’

He finished up his conversation with Arden soon after. He sat at the table, hands cupped around the warm Styrofoam, then sipped at the salty broth and realised he kind of liked it.

He could probably buy some better food now, if he wanted to. Arden had made those chicken sandwiches look easy, and aside from making him feel overly full, they hadn’t really hurt him. He could have those.

After finishing off the meal, he ended up laying down on the couch with his book. He felt like he’d had a huge day, even though there was still so much of the day left to go. He meant to start reading it, liking the raised cover font, running his fingers over it for a while.

He drifted off a few minutes later, one arm wrapped around the unopen book and his other hand tucked up by his face, with the thought that he knew he had things to talk about at therapy the next day, but that he wasn’t too worried about it for once.


	29. Normal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *drumrolls* It's NaNoWriMo! While I'd love to say that means more updates on this story it probably doesn't because I uh, wrote, *checks wrist* 72,000 words last month. Yeah. So I know I'm going to finish NaNo, because I've been doing one every month since July because of tHIS STORY dslkfjdaslkfjds

‘You know, you can just call me Ef,’ he said, after Mack tried and failed to say his name a second time. Mack’s cheeks flushed, she nodded, and Efnisien nodded and looked down at his phone and worked on trying to ignore the wave of intrusive thoughts that came from that exchange alone. Now he was remembering why he didn’t interact with most women. He hated it. And ignoring the thoughts wasn’t working. Was this something he was meant to talk to Dr Gary about? Goddamn it.

The stupid thing was, after kind of hating her, and then being indifferent to her, he thought maybe he didn’t actually mind Mack at all. Like, sure, she was slower than he was when she typed – so far everyone was – but she was pretty much never rude, even though she probably heard Efnisien shouting and screaming and throwing things in his sessions with Dr Gary for the last two years. Also, she worked in an office with other sex offenders, which…

Now that Efnisien thought about it, was kind of weird.

‘Hey,’ Efnisien said to Dr Gary, five minutes later, settled in his chair in Dr Gary’s office. ‘Is it safe for Mack to work here? Like, with…people like us? Like me?’

Dr Gary was in the middle of putting his pen on the desk, and he paused halfway through, looking over to Efnisien. And then he put the pen down without even looking at it. It was half off the desk.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Just, she’s like…young. And she’s kind of pretty. Isn’t she a target? Shouldn’t you have someone else doing that job?’

Dr Gary considered him for a minute, and Efnisien didn’t think it was such a big deal that he was asking. Probably, Dr Gary was assuming that Efnisien wanted to hurt her or some shit, and now he was getting worried.

‘It is a more vulnerable job than the average job,’ Dr Gary said finally. ‘But Mack has clear instructions on how to behave – whether to engage or not with each individual client – and to always talk to me if someone’s behaviour changes, or if anyone ever threatens her. She also has a panic button beneath the desk that activates an alarm. What made you think about this today?’

Efnisien felt a little appeased that Dr Gary had at least considered that her job was dangerous – but of course he had, that’s what he was like – and then knotted his hands together and wished, not for the first time, that he’d bought the stupid fidget cube with him. He needed a bag or something. Why did he keep forgetting to look for one online? Probably because he only needed one when he was outside, and forgot to search for one when he was inside.

‘I talked to her last week,’ Efnisien said, staring down at his knuckles. ‘I’ve never really thought about doing it before, except to tell her that her typing sucks. Not that I’m going to tell her that. But this week it occurred to me that like, maybe I shouldn’t be doing that. Talking to her. I’m having…’

He gestured towards his head. His universal symbol for intrusive thoughts or relative insanity.

‘I mean I was. They’ve stopped now. Sort of. There’s like after-images, like ghost effects.’

‘May I ask what the content of the intrusive thoughts are?’

Efnisien took a breath, then nodded. They used to spend most of their sessions talking about the content of Efnisien’s intrusive thoughts. It was a form of desensitisation or some shit, but Dr Gary also used it to constantly reiterate that Efnisien wasn’t actually doing any of those things. In many cases, he’d never done any of the things he thought about.

‘Hurting her,’ he said. ‘Like, the things I actually used to do. Pushing her up against a wall and groping her and stuff. It’s not going much further than that. But I don’t want them at all. I don’t want to think about it. I didn’t have them last time when I said bye to her.’

‘Thank you for telling me,’ Dr Gary said. ‘As far as intrusive thoughts go, this sounds quite mild for you, and you seem lucid and engaged. This would be a low number, yes?’ Efnisien nodded and then flashed two fingers to indicate the number he thought it would be. ‘Is it getting easier to understand that you don’t want to act on what you see or experience in your head?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, frowning. ‘But doesn’t that just mean that I’m like…not taking them as seriously anymore? Or maybe- Like, maybe the less they affect me, the more I’m likely to be really bad. Behave really badly.’

‘Do you feel like you’re not taking them as seriously?’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘Are you wanting to hurt people more, or less?’

‘Less,’ Efnisien said. ‘A lot less, overall.’

‘Perhaps,’ Dr Gary said, ‘the intrusive thoughts are less severe because you’re more aware of your position that you _don’t_ want to do these things. The intrusive thoughts are a form of obsessive rumination, you become obsessed that you’re going to act on what you’re thinking, and in your case you convinced yourself that you wanted to do those things, while also experiencing the paradox of not wanting to do those things. Now, you have a much clearer stance on whether you want to act violently, criminally, or abusively, so there’s less of a temptation to obsessively ruminate. You’re starting to gain some separation from that strata of intrusive thought. That’s really good news.’

‘Is it?’ Efnisien said. ‘It’s not- It doesn’t mean… I mean because if I do something really terrible, and those thoughts weren’t there to stop me, then-’

Dr Gary had held up a hand, his face stern. ‘You’ve spent about three years telling me that the thoughts are there to _make_ you, not stop you. In fact, you often cited the spontaneity and vividity of those intrusive thoughts as proof that you were immoral. Can you explain what’s shifted?’

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said, feeling helpless. ‘I didn’t realise they had changed.’

‘That’s all right, we can circle back around on that another time. Was there anything in particular you wanted to talk about today?’

Efnisien wondered if Dr Gary was disappointed in him. He probably was. Efnisien went over a few topics in his head, it wasn’t like he was ever running out of stuff to talk about.

‘Um, I can’t remember like, most of the last session,’ Efnisien said finally. ‘Is that…? Like- Am I going crazy in a different way or something?’

‘Can you explain what you mean by not being able to remember it?’

‘Like I literally can’t remember,’ Efnisien said. ‘I know it was an important one, and I know that we talked about like, the past a bit, and big subjects, and I remember the part about Gwyn, but everything else is like fog. Like I go to look at it, and there’s just fog.’

Dr Gary nodded, but didn’t look like he was super alarmed.

‘It’s not unusual,’ he said. ‘It was an intense session for you and we went over some traumatising subject matter. It’s normal for the mind to try and protect you from that, especially while it’s still trying to find a place for everything. Sometimes, when you can’t access something consciously, it doesn’t mean your unconscious isn’t working away at it. You can still see the positive benefits of sessions like that over time, even if you never remember the session itself.’

‘Really?’ Efnisien said, shocked.

‘Really,’ Dr Gary said, smiling. ‘Your brain continues to process thoughts, emotions and much more whether you’re consciously thinking about it or not. It’s one of the reasons – at least it’s theorised – behind why we dream. That’s how intrusive thoughts can happen in the first place. They come from a deeper and separate place. In your case, they also come from a place of trauma. The reason it can feel like they have _so_ much power, is because your conscious mind can’t control them easily just by telling yourself to stop thinking about them. There are obviously parts of your mind that operate on their own.’

A flood of fear followed those words, and Dr Gary’s expression shifted. He tilted his head.

‘Does it upset you to know that?’ he said.

‘Doesn’t that make me _way more likely to hurt people?’_ Efnisien said. ‘If my brain is just doing shit I can’t control?’

‘No,’ Dr Gary said warmly. ‘You have three years of experience knowing that’s true. If you like – even though it’s not a very smooth analogy – you can think of your conscious mind as the final barrier before your thoughts become actions that make it into the real world. This is why we say people are their actions, and not their thoughts. _Everyone_ experiences intrusive thoughts to some degree, they are completely normal. Most people aren’t disturbed by them, because they’re rare, or they know they won’t act on them. They might – at most – feel a flash of guilt for wanting to shoulder check someone who’s walking too slow in a shopping centre. But – even in the case of severe intrusive thoughts – you always have final say on whether you act on them or not.’

‘But I don’t have final say on whether I can remember this session from last time.’

‘You do, in a way,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You can ask me to remind you, or write down what we talked about. These are choices you make, actions you’re taking or not taking. But also, this is a different situation. Your brain is trying to protect you, likely because there’s some emotional risk with sessions like the last one. You not being able to remember tells us that there was enough in that session to be really impactful on your emotional state. Perhaps what we talked about was something you were ready to talk about, ready to learn more about, but not ready to _remember.’_

‘That’s so weird. But I guess it is kind of like that. I mostly…have been fine. I’ve felt suicidal like a couple of times but… I still went to the bookshop yesterday,’ Efnisien said. ‘And I’ve still been working. So you’re kind of saying that my mind might be blocking stuff so I can get on with my day?’

‘I definitely think that’s a part of it,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I’m not alarmed. If anything, it’s a really positive sign that your brain is working hard to keep you grounded in reality. The fact that you’ve tried to keep up with your newer habits, such as seeing Arden, visiting the bookshop, and so on, is also a good sign. Sometimes it’s tempting to panic over things like this because they can _feel_ alarming. But if you step back and take an aerial view of your life _,_ the overall quality of your lived experience, you’re having less intrusive thoughts and you have more of a sense of not wanting to hurt people than ever before. You’re continuing with new, healthier habits that challenge your agoraphobia and allow you to meet more people.’

‘Huh,’ Efnisien said. ‘I went to choir rehearsals too. It went fine.’

‘That’s wonderful to hear.’

‘So I’m supposed to kind of leave it?’

‘You absolutely can,’ Dr Gary said. ‘It often doesn’t mean your memory of the session is gone forever, and it doesn’t mean we can’t revisit those subjects in the future. It also doesn’t mean you’re necessarily out of the woods, so I’d like you to stay vigilant about your emotional state where possible, and I still want you to contact me if you feel suicidal, especially if it’s worse than usual, or it’s in a fashion that feels more severe and prolonged than your more usual experience of ideation.’

‘It’s really not weird?’ Efnisien said, feeling bad for double checking, but kind of relieved to know that it wasn’t a sign that he was completely crazy.

‘It’s not,’ Dr Gary said. ‘If your brain is shielding you, everything’s in order. Life is challenging enough without having to feel everything at full scale all the time. Many people don’t notice what their brain is shielding them from because they’re not in therapy. But trust me, this happens to people without any mental illnesses or disorders. They might just one day go ‘I haven’t thought about that horrible thing in years, I can’t believe I nearly forgot about it.’ The fact that they remembered in that moment means it was never truly gone. Brains adapt, they try to protect us. I think it’s great that you noticed, but it also sounds like you’ve been trying to respect the fog?’

‘I guess,’ Efnisien said. ‘I mean, I don’t want you to tell me what we talked about last session. I kind of know, as like a vague outline.’

‘Good. I’m not worried, especially as you seem to be less anxious than usual today,’ Dr Gary said, sounding almost bright for him, though his voice was always pretty even.

‘I do?’ Efnisien said. ‘I still feel pretty fucking anxious.’

‘Do you? Why is that?’ Dr Gary said.

‘I dunno. I guess… I kind of wanted to talk to you about, um, when I went to the bookshop. Like- Fuck. I kind of freaked out. Not on the way there, though I think I was freaking out on the way now that I think about it. But like, I got too scared to walk home because of what happened last week. And Arden had to stay on the phone with me for like thirty minutes, maybe longer actually, because I was, um, so, so scared I guess… That’s never happened to me before. And I hate it and I’d like to know how to make it stop.’

‘Do you want to describe it to me in more detail?’

‘Sure. But it’s _stupid.’_

Dr Gary’s lips quirked, but he didn’t say anything. So Efnisien described it all in more detail and at the end, Dr Gary leaned back in his chair and sighed.

‘It’s a very normal response to significant trauma,’ Dr Gary said. ‘What’s the saying? Post-trauma is a reasonable response to an unreasonable situation. But it was a distressing thing to go through, and I’m sorry you had to experience that. What you’re describing is a combination of hypervigilance, and other PTSD symptoms coming up, including avoidance – avoiding the old route, even avoiding thinking about it, until you had no other choice but to think about it. That’s a little different to the protective fog we talked about before, but your brain is still trying to protect you.’

‘Didn’t fucking feel like it.’ Efnisien said under his breath.

‘Of course. Symptoms like this become disorders when they become maladaptive. When they start hurting you, instead of helping you, and they hurt you for some time – then you’re moving into disorder territory. We know you have PTSD, so we’re going to see maladaptive behaviours as a result of this. People are most familiar with flashbacks – I believe you were having somatic flashbacks even if you weren’t aware of them.’

‘Somatic. Physical? You mean- My head hurting and stuff?’ His fingers went up to his temple automatically. It wasn’t hurting now, in fact it hadn’t hurt since yesterday, aside from the small ache he sometimes got when he was washing his hair over that patch of scalp.

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Exactly that. Your body was remembering for you, trying to communicate to you so that you would make a decision that would stop the event from happening in the future. Of course, the event was random and unpredictable, that’s what made it so traumatic in the first place. It was very brave of you to walk home.’

‘Brave,’ Efnisien scoffed.

Dr Gary nodded. ‘Yes. Brave.’

‘But nothing happened.’

‘You were afraid, you walked home anyway. Even if you needed to talk to someone on the phone, that doesn’t change the fact that you still decided to walk home on your own, even taking a similar route that would bring you past where you were so badly hurt.’

‘I wasn’t hurt that badly.’

Dr Gary’s eyes glittered, and he frowned. Efnisien looked away. ‘Do you think your upbringing might be biasing you?’

_‘You_ obviously do,’ Efnisien said, glaring at the floor.

‘All right, let’s try something else. How would you feel if something like what happened to you – being beaten in a prolonged fashion that involved fists and booted feet – was something that happened to Arden?’

Efnisien felt his whole body go still, then cold. He tucked one of his hands back into his sleeve. He was wearing the grey jumper today. He felt like the blue jumper was something he wanted to wear around Arden, which was stupid, because Arden needed to know he had more clothes than that.

‘How would you feel,’ Dr Gary said quietly, ‘if you walked into the bookshop, and Arden had a visible cut and bruise on his face, then revealed that he’d been jumped and then viciously beaten in broad daylight?’

‘But he does judo,’ Efnisien said, the words coming out automatically, even though he still felt weird and unable to move.

‘Imagine he doesn’t. Or that it couldn’t help him. How do you think that would feel, Efnisien?’

‘But it’s different,’ Efnisien said immediately.

‘All right, we’ll get to why it’s different in a minute. I’d like you to answer the question, please. How do you think you would _feel_ if Arden was hurt like that?’

Efnisien pressed his lips together. Thought experiments were _stupid._

‘Bad,’ he said.

‘In what way?’ Dr Gary said.

‘I don’t know, just _bad._ Arden is like…a good person. And I don’t want to even- I don’t want to even think about it. He shouldn’t be hurt that way.’

‘But you said yourself that it wasn’t that bad, so by your standards, being viciously beaten in broad daylight and wearing visible cuts and bruises wouldn’t mean he was hurt that badly,’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien’s gaze snapped to Dr Gary’s, anger skyrocketing in him that Dr Gary would say something like that. And then as soon as he reacted, he realised he’d walked right into a fucking trap. He stared at Dr Gary, his anger dissipating, and he pressed his lips together, annoyed.

‘Do you think if it were Arden who experienced that, such a level of violence would actually look quite serious?’ Dr Gary said.

‘It’s different for me,’ Efnisien said. ‘I’m used to it.’

‘Efnisien, you are _not_ used to it,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Or you categorically would _not_ have had a traumatic reaction to what happened.’

‘But I am used to it! It’s not serious, I didn’t need to go to a hospital, and look, I’m fucking fine! I’m used to it!’

‘Okay, let’s try something different,’ Dr Gary said, taking a breath. Efnisien thought he looked frustrated, but Efnisien had him beat, he was mad as fuck. ‘I accept that you’re used to it on some level, because of your upbringing. You witnessed and experienced a lot of violence, and-’

‘No one was violent to me, ever, in that house,’ Efnisien said. ‘No one.’

Dr Gary gave him a _look,_ and Efnisien glared back. He felt the weird stand-off tension between them.

‘No one was violent to me!’ Efnisien shouted. ‘No one!’

‘Then how on earth could you be used to it?’ Dr Gary said calmly.

Efnisien bared his teeth, then slammed back in his chair. ‘I’m not talking about this. I’m not talking about this! This is so fucking stupid. It wasn’t brave that I walked home. It was all stupid, and I’m not talking about it.’

_I hate this,_ he thought. _I hate you._

But the spike of anger left him, and he felt desperately afraid that Dr Gary was going to criticise him or look down on him for behaving in such an immature way. He didn’t want to look up, because he was uncertain of the expression he’d see, and he didn’t want to know how much Dr Gary was tired of him as a client. It was dumb that he didn’t want to talk about it.

‘Okay,’ Dr Gary said. ‘We’ll table that one for the rest of today.’

‘Bet you’re really happy with how things are going today, after last session. Turns out I can’t have good sessions all the time, huh?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, like,’ Efnisien waved a hand in the air. ‘With me like, talking about _everything_ last time. And then being a fucking idiot three year old this time, a fucking piece of shit idiot about basic stuff that everyone can talk about.’

Dr Gary was silent for a long time, and then he cleared his throat. ‘May I make a note?’

Efnisien frowned down at the ground. What the hell about any of that was noteworthy? Dr Gary hadn’t made any notes last time. Maybe he just didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the session or whatever.

‘Fine,’ Efnisien grit out.

Dr Gary reached for his laptop, then typed for a little while, then closed the screen. ‘Instead of talking about what happened, I’d like to ask you why you feel this is a bad session.’

‘Because I’m not talking about anything! I’m being _useless.’_

‘That’s not how it seems to me,’ Dr Gary said. Efnisien looked at him, and Dr Gary wasn’t leaning back against the chair anymore, so he definitely wasn’t relaxed. Though he’d also looked way more tense in the past. ‘I see a client who’s been trying to talk about a range of subjects, some of which touch on past and present trauma, who’s discovered that he has a boundary around a certain subject and has articulated it. Could you have articulated it in a different way? Yes. Was it bad that you articulated it at all? No.’

‘But I’m supposed to talk about things. That’s why I’m _here._ ’

‘You are,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You’re doing it right now.’

‘But I talked about so much hard stuff last week.’

‘You did,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You can’t do that every session, Efnisien. It takes a toll, and it makes complete sense that today you’re more sensitive to difficult subjects, and are pulling back on some of them. We don’t have to keep talking about what happened, and this isn’t a bad session because you don’t want to talk about it. We know from experience that you’ve put big walls around certain subjects, but it doesn’t stop you from sometimes bringing them up, or even talking about them.’

_He means with Crielle, because I talked about her last week._ Efnisien took a breath and blew it out hard, still frustrated.

‘Why am I so _stupid?_ ’ Efnisien said plaintively. ‘Why can’t I just _get_ stuff? I understand what you’re saying. I do. I get that the right thing to do is to realise that bad stuff happened in my past, and it impacted me, and that some of the reason I see you is to like, deal with that. I do get that. So why can’t I just… _get it?’_

‘Firstly, you’re not stupid at all. You’re incredibly intelligent, which makes you quite sophisticated at self-sabotage, such as when you use your mind to undermine your progress in therapy. Secondly, it takes time, Efnisien. You’re not learning some facts for a test at school, you’re remaking some of the foundations of your existence. That’s not easy. It’s incredibly hard. Many people won’t even try. They will stay stuck in unhealthy foundations for the rest of their lives. It’s hard and painful, even for people who have had remarkably mundane lives by say, your standards. We do it because we have faith that the outcome might lead to a more enriched, heathy existence. Or because we’re chasing happiness, or contentment. Or even just because someone might be sick of not sleeping through the night. But make no mistake, Efnisien, it’s challenging and it’s difficult, and the brain can struggle with it.’

Efnisien rubbed at his face. He didn’t like this at all. ‘I didn’t mean to fish,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to say I’m intelligent or anything.’

‘Sometimes,’ Dr Gary said, ‘it’s easier to feel like you’re stupid, and that it’s all your fault that this isn’t a kinder process, than to acknowledge that you’re intelligent, and that the process itself is difficult. In the first, you still have some power, because if it’s your fault, you can change the outcome. In the second, you lack the power to make the process easy, because the process itself will never be easy. Humans will almost always choose the pain associated with guilt, rather than the pain associated with powerlessness. It’s actually part of what makes this process so challenging.’

That resonated, and Efnisien hated that it did. He closed his eyes. Dr Gary was basically trying to tell him that sometimes this sucked and there was nothing he could do about it, and it was just going to suck anyway. Efnisien understood it, but it didn’t sink anywhere deep or meaningful. It was on the surface, which meant he hadn’t accepted it, even if he understood logically where Dr Gary was coming from.

‘I don’t get why I can see the logic of something, and still not believe it,’ Efnisien said.

‘Because the events in your life have led you to a point where it’s difficult for you to do that. It’s great that you can see the logic of it. Because that means that a part of your brain knows a different way of doing things, even if it’s not ready to accept it yet. It’s still there in the wings, waiting for its moment.’

‘Like a sleeper cell.’

Dr Gary laughed, and when Efnisien looked at him, his fingers were at his forehead. ‘If you like, but I’m not sure I’d immediately associate it with terrorism. But…yes, the metaphor works.’

Efnisien nodded. ‘Brains are weird.’

‘They are,’ Dr Gary said. ‘They’re imperfect, an organ of fat and tissue and neurons. We can’t expect them to be flawlessly designed because they haven’t been.’

‘Weird.’

‘For what it’s worth, I don’t think this has been a bad session at all. It might not feel emotionally momentous to have sessions like this, but sometimes it’s important to just review what you’re thinking and how you’re feeling about what we’re doing. It’s great that you told me you can’t remember parts of the last session, so I can talk to you about what might be going on. It’s good to touch base on this belief you have that you’re stupid, and a bad client. Therapy isn’t only about talking about the past, it’s often about talking about how you’re thinking, right now. So this counts, this is all very helpful.’

Efnisien pursed his lips. His stomach was hurting. He wondered if that was a somatic flashback, which sounded stupid. It probably wasn’t. Maybe it was that he should’ve eaten something properly before he walked over.

‘I want to talk to you about going back to one session a week for a little while, if that’s all right with you,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You have a lot to process right now, and I don’t want to stack up too much until the only thing you’re able to focus on is therapy. You’re building a life for yourself, I’d like you to have more time to live and experience it. What do you think?’

‘Not just trying to get rid of me?’ Efnisien joked.

Dr Gary didn’t even crack a smile. ‘No, I’m not doing that.’

Efnisien hated that he needed to hear things like that, and he hated that he still worried Dr Gary wanted to get rid of him. But he also saw the merit in what Dr Gary was saying. He also thought – especially after Dr Gary had told him to consider an aerial view of his life – that he was doing better than before, even if it didn’t always feel better. Therapy was weird that way, he could be falling apart and feel like everything was the worst, but he was still seeing Arden, going to choir practice, getting paid more, doing a job he liked.

Something was working, even when it felt like it was a disaster.

‘Yeah, okay,’ Efnisien said. ‘Twice a week is… It’s hard, too.’

‘It is,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I always weigh the pros and cons before suggesting something like that. But I believe you were in crisis when I suggested it, and that the extra sessions have helped give you someone to touch base with while your life began to transform. You seem more secure in what you’ve found for yourself, and we can always return to twice-weekly sessions in the future. And you can always call me, Efnisien. You’ve never abused that privilege, I’m not going to get angry at you if you call. You seem to have forgotten that you can call me for situations like the one you were in, when you needed to get back home from the bookshop.’

‘Stupid shit like that?’ Efnisien said quietly.

‘It wasn’t stupid, it was a strong and overwhelming post-trauma response. That being said, Arden’s solutions were fantastic. It sounds like he’s an efficient problem-solver.’

‘He can solve anything,’ Efnisien said, resisting the urge to smile to himself, because no, he wasn’t that far gone. He wasn’t.

He wasn’t that excited that he was going to see Arden on the weekend. Just…regular excited. A normal amount of excited.

‘I mean, mostly anything,’ Efnisien said. ‘But he always sees things more clearly when I’m panicking, probably because he doesn’t really panic at the same time.’

‘I’m glad you’re enjoying his company. Remember, you can also always see Mika again if you want to touch base about how the relationship is developing, or ask any specific questions around your sexuality or Arden’s interests.’

Efnisien nodded. He liked Mika, but he also didn’t really feel any need to see him. Not right now, anyway.

‘Is it okay if I like, say hi to Mack?’ Efnisien said. ‘Cuz, I can stop. I can stop if you’re worried.’

‘Actually, she told me that you initiated contact after the last session,’ Dr Gary said. ‘But no, I’m not expecting that you’ll hurt her.’

‘But… I’ve- But I’ve hurt… And she’s a girl, so, and- Shouldn’t you be more responsible?’

‘Efnisien, you haven’t hurt anyone physically in three years,’ Dr Gary said patiently, calmly. ‘You’ve been seeing Mack every week, just about, for two years running. No, I don’t think you’re more likely to hurt her right at the time you’ve decided to ask to learn her name, and then ask me if she’s safe working here. You were her greatest threat two years ago when you were entering life after Hillview. She was under instructions not to engage with you until you engaged willingly, in a non-hostile way, with her. Efnisien, I’m pleased that you asked after her and her welfare, and it’s okay if you say hi to Mack. She’s able to determine how much she wants to engage with you, and she will tell me if she thinks your behaviour is changing, immediately. I trust her, and I trust you.’

‘Sounds stupid,’ Efnisien muttered. ‘And dangerous.’

‘If you were a new client, a new sex offender, yes, it would be very dangerous and ill-informed,’ Dr Gary said seriously. ‘But sometimes, people recover better when they’ve realised they can still earn trust from the people around them. You’ve earned my trust, Efnisien. I hope you treat it with the respect it deserves. That doesn’t mean that our vigilance is gone or that Mack suddenly has no way to deal with you, if you act on a desire to hurt her. But I don’t believe you’re someone waiting for your moment or staking out a victim. If anything, you might be finding it easier to humanise some of the people around you that you previously wouldn’t have noticed or paid much attention to.’

‘I really don’t want to hurt her,’ Efnisien said, looking down.

‘That’s what matters,’ Dr Gary said. ‘And I’m glad to hear it. Also, if that changes, you can talk to me about it. I’m not going to be disappointed. This process isn’t linear, as we’ve discussed many times before. You may experience periods of wanting to hurt people – me, strangers, even Arden – and it’s always something you can bring up in our sessions.’

Efnisien nodded, and over the next ten minutes they wrapped up by reviewing what they’d talked about and setting up a new schedule. Efnisien was going back to one session a week, Thursdays now, so the day after he normally went to see Arden at the bookshop. He didn’t really know what he was going to do about getting to and from the bookshop. He wanted to pretend he’d be fine, but that panic was horrible, he didn’t want to go through it again.

As he left, he looked at Mack and waved. ‘Bye, Mack.’

‘Bye, Ef,’ she said. She didn’t wave back, but she didn’t look mad, or scared. She just looked…professional. She looked fine. Efnisien was kind of glad she had an alarm.

He made his way down the steps and headed home, waiting for the intrusive thoughts to start. Waiting to daydream against his will about hurting a receptionist. Instead, he thought about the fact that he’d be seeing Arden soon. Even though it wasn’t always smooth sailing between the two of them, he was still looking forward to it.


	30. Parameters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know a weirdly serious concern of mine is running out of words for these chapter titles because I doomed myself by picking single words but also like, I'm not going to run out of words, dictionaries go off with a whole list of 'em.
> 
> Hopefully this chapter finds most of you feeling a bit more relieved, or at least, a bit less 'constantly doomscrolling' on certain issues. One particular issue. I, for one, am tired, but that's pretty normal for me, lol. 
> 
> One of my cats is sleeping next to me on the chair I have beside me (just for him) and his little hind feet are twitching as he dreams his little old man dreams.

Isabelle was outside for the day. Efnisien started to protest, but Arden only smiled and shook his head.

‘No, she has a bone, trust me, she doesn’t want to come inside, and she’s not allowed to have the really meaty ones inside because that was the summer we had _maggots!’_

Efnisien stared at him and Arden laughed.

‘Dogs are like that sometimes,’ he said. ‘All right, let’s do this at the table. As much as I’d like to lie down on the couch with you, it’s going to be a bit too distracting, and I want us firing on all cylinders. Or most of our cylinders, anyway. What do you want to drink?’

‘Um, water, please,’ Efnisien said. He thought about saying he didn’t want anything, but knew that Arden would probably get him something anyway. And his mouth did get dry sometimes and it was good to have the water there.

‘Great, I also have snacks. I really wish something like this didn’t take so long, but it kind of needs to. Honestly, if this was a one off scene with someone, it’d be really stripped down, but this is… I mean you’re new to _everything,’_ Arden said as he poured cold water from the fridge into two glasses. ‘That and you’re coming with a fuckton of baggage that means I’m sort of going to have to dictionary my way through some of these things. A lot of newbies still have a pretty basic idea, from like, fantasy books or porn or stuff. Your foundation is really _not_ that.’

He brought the glasses over and went back to the cupboard, bringing out different items. A box of savoury rosemary and cheese crackers, a packet of dried mixed nuts, another of dried fruit – which Efnisien promised himself he wouldn’t eat even though he really wanted to – and came over with everything precariously balanced on his arms.

Crielle would have had the food pre-made, sometimes catered. She would have had food on fancy ceramic plates and platters, there would have been guest-specific cutlery. Arden dumped the box of crackers and everything else on the table. He opened the box and shoved it towards Efnisien.

Eventually Efnisien reached for one of the macadamia nuts in the other packet. He hadn’t had one in over three years.

‘Okay, so,’ Arden said, staring at his tablet and scrolling down the screen. ‘Oh boy. I’m used to teaching classes of beginners, and I’m used to newbies, but… But this is new! So I might miss something, or forget something, and if something doesn’t make sense to you, _tell me,_ okay?’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said.

‘Are you comfortable, at least?’

Efnisien pressed his lips together. He really wanted to be on the couch. The table felt weirdly formal, and he knew this was important, but he already had a low-key stomach-ache, and he didn’t want it to get worse.

‘Not comfortable?’ Arden said.

‘Feels like an exam,’ Efnisien said. ‘I know we can’t sit on the couch, but like…’

‘What about the floor?’

Efnisien blinked and then shrugged, and Arden sprang up and took all the food with him and placed that on the circular red rug by the television. Then he pulled all the throw cushions off the couches – at that point Efnisien had thought to grab the two glasses of water – and was piling them onto the floor. He had a lot of cushions, Efnisien had never noticed before.

‘Come join me,’ Arden said, sitting cross legged and rocking side to side with what must have been excess energy. ‘Your hips are okay, aren’t they? I gave you more cushions. Do you have any problems sitting on the floor?’

‘Are you like, nervous?’ Efnisien said, coming over and handing Arden his glass. ‘My hips are doing better. Not, um, perfect. But it doesn’t hurt to sit or lie down anymore.’

‘I _am_ nervous. This matters to me, Ef. It’s not like teaching a group of people I’m probably never going to see again, or at least never play with. You matter. And I know you’re curious, but you’d be surprised how often curiosity or fantasy doesn’t match up to reality.’

Efnisien nodded. He reached for a walnut and ate it, comforted by its familiar nothingy taste.

‘Anyway, first things first,’ Arden said. ‘For the sake of full disclosure, you already know I have casual partners and that I’m promiscuous, but I also work as a professional dominant. It’s actually my main income, the bookshop is mostly to help out Kadek. I need to get tested for STIs more than the average person so I can be accountable to my clients, and also to my partners. So if you need to see my test results before we do anything more, I can get those for you. I use an app with my regular play partners, they can see when I was last tested, but you’re not sexually active, and you and I aren’t going to be having sex. I don’t think you need to download it, but if you want to, I can send you the app.’

Efnisien was still reeling at the words _professional dominant._

He knew they existed in a very loose, tenuous fashion. He’d mostly just imagined women wearing black leather and heels and stepping on people.

‘You… You do this for money?’ Efnisien said. ‘Do you have sex? For like, money?’

‘I’m not a sex worker,’ Arden said quietly, ‘though I know a lot of really great sex workers.’

‘I don’t think it’s bad,’ Efnisien said quickly.

‘You can,’ Arden said frankly, leaning sideways into a pile of cushions. ‘You’re allowed. It’s why I’m telling you. I was maybe secretly hoping it might reassure you that people trust me enough to pay me enough that I can afford this house.’ He laughed softly. ‘But also… I guess I just want to reinforce that power dynamics are an inherent part of what I need in life.’

‘So…. do you make bank?’

‘I do,’ Arden said, grinning. ‘I do, actually. I’ve been doing this for about nine years, most of my clients are long-time regulars who are _very_ nice to me. I don’t necessarily mean as subs or bottoms or whatever, but like, some of them bring gifts on top of my regular rate.’

Efnisien took a shaky breath. He felt a little like he’d never measure up to all the different people Arden had been with. His heart pounded in his chest. Arden had an old car, but his house was nice, in a nice area. Isabelle was large and always well-groomed, with a close clip that always felt soft and good. Arden’s house always seemed stocked with whatever food he wanted to eat. He never seemed worried about money.

‘You feeling a bit overwhelmed?’ Arden said.

‘I don’t get…what you like about this,’ Efnisien said, gesturing between the two of them.

‘I know,’ Arden said softly. ‘I know, sweetheart. I don’t mind telling you that I like you, and I like what we’ve done so far, I can tell you that as many times as you want me to. I was going to say that maybe what we’ve done together doesn’t feel like much to you, but I think you do feel how important it is. We have really nice chemistry, I want to see where that can go.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘Okay.’

‘All right,’ Arden said decisively. ‘Next, we’re going to do safewords, since you apparently have no idea what they are. In kink, many people use safeword systems. I don’t always, but I don’t think I want to go without them for you. Basically, it’s a system where you can use codewords to indicate that you need me to stop, to slow down, or to let me know that you’re in a good space. You can also just _tell_ me those things, but sometimes bypassing the need to talk in proper sentences and say a single word to capture everything in the moment is easier. You with me so far?’

‘Like this,’ Efnisien said, raising his index finger.

‘Exactly. Now, normally, you’d have something like the traffic light system. Green for go, yellow for slow down – though that can sometimes mean a bunch of different things – and red for stop, or at least, stop right now and check in immediately. But you’ve told me red is a sensitive word for you. So I was thinking- Well, maybe a different word?’

‘Blue?’ Efnisien said.

Arden’s eyes brightened and he wrote it down into his tablet. ‘That’s perfect.’

‘Will you remember? If everyone else is using… Is using red?’

‘Mmhm,’ Arden said. ‘I always remember. I mean- God, I hope I don’t one day forget, but in nine years I’ve never forgotten someone’s safeword, whether they’re using a common system or something really unusual. Are you going to remember blue? I’ll send you a copy of this once we’re done, so you can have it too. Actually, I’ll probably do some early…groundwork to make sure you’ll safeword. Not limit-pushing or anything, just…encouragements.’

Efnisien didn’t know what it meant to do ‘work’ on safewords. He didn’t know what limit-pushing meant – though he could guess, and he didn’t love the sound of that – and he wanted to say he’d use his safewords always, but he wasn’t really sure how any of this worked.

‘How’re you going so far, baby?’

‘I mean- Still feels a bit like an exam.’

Arden did that stupid laughter, almost like a guffaw, and nodded. ‘It does sometimes. And I can’t just be like ‘what are your safewords? What do they mean?’ We have to like- We have to get into the details.’

‘So you can touch me more,’ Efnisien said, swallowing.

‘Mmhm,’ Arden said, smiling at Efnisien.

Efnisien felt the tips of his ears burning. He stared down at the circular rug that they sat on. To give himself something to do, he reached for one of the crackers.

‘Before we even get into kinks, I want to talk about the basic structure of a scene,’ Arden said. ‘Normally, there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. We won’t always be in scenes together, and I won’t expect you to guess when they’re happening. I’ll normally let you know in advance, or you can let me know if you want one. I tend to pretty clearly indicate that we’re starting. Scenes can be really short, sometimes only ten or twenty minutes, or they can be really long.

‘I can be controlling outside of scenes, but I’m always extremely aware that it’s different rules inside and outside of a scene. Scenes sort of have a structure. It’s almost like an agreed upon play between people. In our case, you might agree to… as an example – this doesn’t necessarily have to be something that happens – you might agree to kneel for me on a cushion, and I might handfeed you. The beginning of that scene would be you kneeling, or me asking you to kneel. The middle would be me handfeeding you. The end would be me making sure you were okay and initiating aftercare. My role would be to take care of you and make sure you stayed as safe as possible while that happened. Yours would be to do as I say, to trust yourself enough to let me know when something’s wrong.’

Kneeling. Handfeeding. Efnisien’s mind turned into white noise. He stared at Arden. He was struck by a strange irritation that they were going through this form, instead of just doing that instead.

‘You doing okay? You need to give me a number or anything?’ Arden said.

‘Um.’ Efnisien locked his fingers together. ‘No, it’s just- Um. Is it bad that I like- I like the idea of that?’

‘It’s _really_ not,’ Arden said. ‘It’s really, honestly, truly not.’

‘Because people don’t like that.’

‘Some people do,’ Arden said patiently. ‘I think a lot of this is going to be pretty challenging for you, not because I’m asking you to do things that feel painful or really bad, but because you have a lot of stuff up here…’ Arden tapped his head. ‘And that makes this a struggle for you. There’s an element of…let’s call it soft humiliation. You feel a little ashamed, right? Why? Because you want to kneel for me? Or because of the idea of someone handfeeding you?’

‘Yes,’ Efnisien choked out. ‘To all of it.’

‘Good,’ Arden said warmly. ‘Good, you’re being so honest. That’s perfect.’

Efnisien was dying. He already felt strangely breathless, his teeth scraped over the inside of his lip.

‘So,’ Arden said, going back to sounding businesslike, which was almost a relief at that point, ‘my role would be to say…gently lead you into that feeling, keep you safe during it, then help you out of it. Because that’s emotionally a lot, aftercare is there at the end to make sure we catch any stray kind of- Any stray feelings or worries or fears. Going through something like that seems simple on the surface, but as an experience it can be intense, it can be challenging. It’s obviously not something you’d do for anyone, it’s special. It has to be treated with respect.’

Efnisien didn’t want to think of Robert Berdella at all, but he was struggling to reconcile what Arden was talking about with all the things he’d read about serial killers when he was growing up. A mixture of excitement and fear curdled inside of him, and he realised that this wasn’t just about Arden ‘touching him more.’

He hated that he was still curious. He wanted to ask if his past made him this way, but the words wouldn’t come, stuck somewhere in his chest.

‘This is why we talk about it,’ Arden said, reaching out and placing his hand face up, resting the back of it on the rug. He beckoned with his fingers, until Efnisien hesitantly reached over, his hand hovering above Arden’s. Not touching, because he didn’t have permission.

Arden reached up and grasped Efnisien’s hand.

‘Is there a lot on the form?’ Efnisien said. ‘Is there much left?’

Arden looked down at his tablet and then smiled ruefully.

‘There’s a bit. We can take a break though, and we don’t have to get through it all this weekend. A lot of the time people go through these things on their own and bring completed forms with them, and discuss it, but… I really didn’t want you to be on your own with this stuff.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said weakly. ‘I get it.’

‘Good,’ Arden said, gently separating his hand from Efnisien’s and pressing Efnisien’s hand down to the rug instead. He placed his fingers over it and stroked the back of his hand slowly. ‘Is this okay?’

Efnisien nodded. It was unfair that the back of his hand was so sensitive when Arden touched it.

‘You good to keep going? You’re not having second thoughts?’

‘I want to keep going. I’m probably going to have second thoughts about everything, but like, in a normal way, not in a way that means we have to stop. Which…maybe doesn’t make any sense.’

‘That makes total sense,’ Arden said, grinning. ‘All right. So you know the general structure of a scene, you know about the concept of aftercare even though we don’t know exactly what it’ll look like for you yet, and you know about safewords. That’s all good stuff. Let’s talk about arousal. Before you interrupt me, I don’t mean ‘let’s talk about how we’re going to make each other aroused,’ I mean, let’s talk about what happens if arousal happens, given we’re not going to be making out with each other in that way.’

‘I mean…I might want to,’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t fucking know.’

‘If that happens – _if_ – we’re going to have a talk about it, like we’re talking today. So, I find you arousing, and I find the things we do together arousing, however I feel no pressure or obligation to deal with that while we’re together. Is that all right?’

Efnisien felt like he was nodding a lot, but he didn’t know what to say to someone who talked so openly about finding him arousing.

‘As for you,’ Arden said, ‘it might be that you never feel aroused, but it’s really normal in kink to have an arousal response even if your erogenous zones aren’t being touched. How do you want me to respond to that? Do you want me to ignore it? To stop doing the thing that caused the response? Should that be a safeword scenario? Maybe you don’t know yet.’

Efnisien pulled his hand back into his lap, he needed to concentrate. Arden was right, if they’d relaxed on the couch together, they wouldn’t have gotten anything done.

‘Um. You could probably…ignore it,’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t think it means you have to stop, but maybe- I mean I can technically, um, say like yellow or blue, right? If it’s bad at the time?’

Arden nodded vigorously, then made some notes on his tablet. ‘Oh, speaking of, I just figured erogenous zones were off the table. Like, cock, nipples, ass, we’ll zone those out. That way you won’t have to worry about me touching you there no matter what’s going on.’

‘That doesn’t bother you?’

‘Really doesn’t,’ Arden said. ‘And it’s something I’m used to. So it’s not like this will be the first time I’ve had to pay attention to some of these things. You don’t need to worry about that.’

Arden rolled onto his back and held his tablet above him, then dropped it down onto his chest, looking at Efnisien.

‘Is kissing allowed?’ Arden asked, looking far too innocent for someone who had a whole list of all the stuff he wanted to do on it.

Efnisien opened his mouth to say that it was and then closed it with such force his teeth clicked together. He felt abruptly cold, remembering – of all things – the way Crielle would lean in towards him when he was little. Or the way he’d sometimes have to kneel on the bed to be tall enough for her to kiss him on the mouth. The dry matte of her lipstick, the melange of scents from all the makeup she used, the powder of her foundation if his lips strayed past hers, because he was too young to understand kissing properly.

It bewildered him. He’d liked it. He knew he’d liked it. He’d felt special and important, even loved. Now it left him feeling chilled.

‘No?’ Arden said, his voice quieter than before.

‘It’s just…’

A long silence, Efnisien trying to think about how to talk about something he suddenly never wanted to talk about with anyone, ever again.

‘You don’t have to explain it,’ Arden said. ‘If it’s a limit, it’s a limit. Do you want me to put that one down as a hard limit?’

‘That means you’ll never do it, right?’

Arden already had his tablet down on the floor, rolling onto his side to type it in. As his fingers moved over the touchpad, he pursed his lips.

‘Is it all kissing?’ Arden said. ‘Or just kissing on the mouth?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Like, could I still kiss your neck, or your hand or something?’

Efnisien blinked owlishly, then nodded, even though Arden wasn’t looking at him.

‘Uh, yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘That sounds…’

It sounded fucking terrifying, actually. But he was still curious, and he wasn’t remembering Crielle’s lips on his as much anymore, which meant it probably wouldn’t freak him out in the same way.

‘That’s okay,’ Efnisien said. ‘Maybe.’

‘We’ll make that one a sometimes thing, so we can see how you respond to it,’ Arden said, making some more notes. ‘I think this is going great so far. You’re so sweet, I really appreciate that you’re being cooperative and honest about the things you might not be into.’

‘Yeah, because being hostile is going to go so great for this.’

Efnisien didn’t really like being hostile around Arden in the first place. It’d happened, especially when he’d become super defensive, but that didn’t mean he liked it. Arden had a way of responding that made Efnisien feel like he was just a five year old throwing a tantrum, and Arden wasn’t even mean about it, just firm.

‘It’s not that,’ Arden said, ‘this stuff can be a lot for people. Some defensiveness is _really_ normal, Ef. Actually, this is probably a good time to talk about mutual expectations. This one is tough, because I’ve been into kink for most of my life, so I know what I want in a fairly concrete way, but you’re still…learning. I think your expectations will be something we add to for you over time, okay?’

‘Yeah, okay.’

Expectations. Expectations meant that he might not be able to meet them, which was basically the same as failing. His fingers dug down into the carpet and he wondered why that bothered him so much.

‘In our scenes, I’d like for you to… I’d like for you to follow my orders obediently, without challenging them for the sake of it. So you can ask genuine questions like, if I ask you to kneel, you can ask where, or you can ask if it’s okay to have a cushion beneath your knees. But if I ask you to kneel, I don’t want you to go ‘why?’ or ‘why should I?’’

‘Because that takes away from the… From the roles we’re in?’ Efnisien said. His heart felt like it was fluttering, or maybe that was his pulse. It was definitely something.

‘Yes,’ Arden said, looking up at Efnisien seriously. ‘You can always safeword if something is too confusing or threatening. You can say blue and we can stop and chat about it. Or you can say yellow and flag that you’re overwhelmed or uncertain. Or you can just tell me you’re confused in a sentence, I’m going to listen to that. I want and expect you to safeword as often as you need to, and in the beginning, if that’s all the time, that’s okay. But generally speaking, if I give you an order, it’s an order. It’s not a suggestion from a friend, and we aren’t bantering in those moments like we’re on the same level. Think of how you’d respond to someone with authority – unless you’re really anti-authoritarian, and then maybe imagine how someone else would respond.’

Arden’s eyes were gleaming as he smiled, and Efnisien liked seeing the good humour, because he needed the reminder that this was Arden and not someone who was going to start giving him really mean orders for the sake of it.

‘Mostly,’ Arden said, ‘I think you have a natural inclination towards obedience, and I’d like to bring that out in scenes in ways that are structured and safe for you, and enjoyable for the both of us. But it’s hard sometimes learning for the first time that the dynamic is going to change like that in a scene. And Ef, like, if you _don’t_ want to try that, we can definitely do more without that being a requirement.’

‘But you’d like it,’ Efnisien said, his mouth dry. He twisted and reached for the water, drinking a quarter of it at once.

‘I would, yes, and I think you’d get something out of it as well. Its purpose is, partly, to make it safer for you not to worry and overthink things all the time. You can trust that I’ll be looking after you and telling you what to do. If anything goes wrong, it’ll always be on me, sweetheart.’

His curiosity occasionally bloomed with bursts of fear. He wasn’t worried that Arden would suddenly start hurting him – not exactly – but he was worried about getting it wrong, he was worried that he’d be the one to find a way to fuck it up and it would all be on him instead. That was what he did. He hurt people. And he’d proven he could lash out at Arden, he knew he’d still try and hurt people sometimes.

‘I don’t want to get it wrong,’ Efnisien said, his voice small.

‘I don’t want to set you up to fail,’ Arden said firmly. ‘It’s not going to be like that. Let’s go back to my other example, of me asking you to kneel so I can handfeed you. You were curious about it, weren’t you? How do you think you’d get that wrong, baby?’

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said. ‘I just could. If someone could fuck up something like that, it’d be me.’

Arden’s expression was sympathetic, but he simply shook his head. ‘It doesn’t work that way. The only way it’s going to fall apart is if you go in wanting to disrespect me as a person, and you’ve pretty much never wanted to do that. Even when you’ve felt threatened, and you’ve tried it like a handful of times as a defensive reaction, it’s never been something I can’t get under control again. Efnisien you _don’t_ like hurting people. Or, at least, you don’t like hurting _me._ You’d have to really intentionally work at trying to ruin the day in a way that you’ve never done. You’re just not that kind of person. I wouldn’t be suggesting we try this if I thought you were.’

Arden traced a faint pattern into the red rug, before touching his tablet to make sure the screen didn’t turn off.

‘Some of this is hard to explain without like, showing you first. In some ways it’s really tempting to be like, ‘okay let’s try,’ but I’m not going to take the risk. Let’s just reduce it to something simpler. Do you think you’d be able to try listening to what I ask you to do in a scene?’

Efnisien nodded mutely.

‘Do you think it would be _terrible_ to do?’ Arden asked. ‘If I promised that one of the expectations of myself was that I will always keep you as safe as I can?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t think it would be- I guess it’s just new and…and like, I don’t know, I do want to try. I just don’t want to be that person who fucks it up. Or suddenly realises he hates it, and then like, lets you down.’

‘You won’t be letting me down,’ Arden said.

‘But you want this,’ Efnisien said, frowning at him.

‘I want _you,’_ Arden said. ‘When I said before that we can just stay friends, or whatever this nebulous relationship space is, I’ll take it, baby. Whole-heartedly. Would it be great if you got something out of whatever else we try? Sure. Is it the end of the world if you hate it? No. You know why? I don’t want to do things to you or with you that you hate!’

Efnisien was blushing, feeling kind of reassured and trying to figure out if he was fishing for the reassurance.

‘All right,’ Arden said, pushing up. ‘It’s time for a hug break.’

‘What?’

‘Hug break!’ he announced, coming over to Efnisien and practically falling into him, so that Efnisien rocked backwards and had to brace himself with both hands on the carpet. A small bubble of laughter escaped; his eyes wide as he stared at a white plaster moulding on the ceiling. Arden’s house was really nice.

He felt something quieten as Arden’s arms settled around him, his palms flat on Efnisien’s back before his fingers curled in. Efnisien felt the scrape of it, warm and good. His eyelids felt heavy, and he closed them, resisting the urge to tip his head into Arden’s neck or shoulder. But he wanted to.

‘Can I…?’ Efnisien said, raising one of his arms tentatively. Arden said he had blanket permission, but he still had to ask.

‘Yes,’ Arden said firmly. ‘Please.’

Efnisien rested his hands carefully on Arden’s back, one up over his shoulder blade, the other just beneath it. Arden smelled very faintly of cologne, and a little bit of sweat. His back was lean beneath his clothes. Today Arden had worn a bright orange shirt that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a construction worker, and a black unbuttoned, collared shirt over it. The texture of the black shirt was really nice.

‘Hey, Ef,’ Arden said, his voice low, almost sultry. ‘Do you eat pasta?’

The absurdity of it almost broke Efnisien’s brain, and then he couldn’t seem to get his mind online again when he realised he didn’t have an answer. Did he eat pasta? He did in Hillview, didn’t he? That was the last time he’d had properly home-cooked meals that weren't zapped to death in a microwave.

He hadn’t realised it’d been two years since, but he didn’t use his oven and he didn’t use his stove. He didn’t get food from restaurants or cafes because it was too expensive, though he could maybe do that now. Sometimes. It seemed way too indulgent. For a while, Efnisien had only used his stove to burn things, like paper, or plastic.

The question should have been an easy one, but instead he pressed his face against Arden’s shoulder, hiding from something that felt too big to comprehend.

‘No?’ Arden said gently, his sultry voice disappearing. Fingers came up and began twirling the curls in his hair, Efnisien felt the little tugs in his scalp as a result.

‘It’s, um, no I think pasta’s fine, it’s just been, um, I think two years since I’ve had like, a proper home-cooked meal. Unless you're counting microwave porridge.’

Arden said nothing, and then Efnisien had the air partly crushed out of him as Arden’s arms tightened fiercely around him. One hand hooking into his back, the other on the back of his head, keeping him close, palms pressing roughly.

‘Oh, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘You break my fucking heart sometimes.’

‘Sorry,’ Efnisien said, his voice muffled in Arden’s shirt.

Arden laughed, shook his head in a way that Efnisien could feel, with both of them being so close. Efnisien didn’t know if he’d ever get over the wonder he felt that someone would just be close to him like this, without insisting that he do something terrible beforehand, without needing him to jump through hoops for it. Arden offered affection so easily that it was like an injury to think about it too much. Was this what it was always like for other people? Probably not.

Probably not.

Maybe it was just Arden, and that was why so many people liked him.

‘Mmm,’ Arden hummed against the side of his head. ‘Hug breaks are the best.’

 _They really, really are,_ Efnisien thought.

‘And then I get to cook you _pastaaaaaa,’_ Arden said in the dumbest sing-song voice Efnisien had ever heard. Despite his strange, heavy mood, he laughed, the sound of it catching him by surprise. Arden laughed too, and didn’t let him go.


	31. Culinary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s note:** _Pastel Shibari Dreams_ doesn’t exist as a book (but should, that being said - pastel bdsm dynamics and aesthetics are all over the place on social media these days), however _Leading and Supporting Love_ does, and I’m a fan.
> 
> In addition, this chapter focuses a fair bit on disordered eating, and Crielle’s issues with food.

Efnisien wanted to help Arden, but he didn’t trust himself in a kitchen.

‘Um,’ Efnisien said, standing awkwardly and trying to think of something he could do. ‘So I shouldn’t really be handling knives, and um, I only use my stove for like, burning things. Like…objects. But it sets off the smoke alarm. And then like when I got out of Hillview I got a book on true crime and Dr Gary told me that was a bad idea and told me to throw it out and I knew I couldn’t set the book on fire in my apartment so I set it on fire in a bin outside and the police got called and that was how I got sectioned back to Hillview for a while.’

Arden stared at him and Efnisien made a face.

‘Basically what I’m saying is that I really want to help but I don’t know how.’

‘Oh!’ Arden said, his expression clearing. ‘No, no, you’re fine. I just want you to be comfortable. Besides, this is easy. It’s just like, packet pasta, sauce from a jar, some extra stuff. Wait, do you not-? Do you not cook? How do you…eat?’

‘Cereal,’ Efnisien said, shrugging. ‘Um. Cup noodles. I can use an electric kettle, and there’s no fires. The microwave sometimes but I overcook things a ton and I just mostly make porridge because it’s cheap. I eat a lot of like, nuts and stuff, and like, things on special, like discounted muesli bars when they’re basically almost past their best before date. They say they’re gonna go bad by the next day but muesli bars last forever, I once got like ten packets for ten cents each. Um. Things like that.’

‘Yeah…’ Arden said, moving around the kitchen efficiently. ‘You’re kind of really bad at food, huh? Did anyone teach you how to cook, growing up?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘Food was weird, growing up.’

‘Weird how?’

Efnisien’s hands drifted to his stomach, then drifted away again. ‘Just weird, I guess. My aunt was weird about it. Like really controlling, you could say. I had to eat what she told me, and I wasn’t…’

Efnisien wasn’t even really thinking about that. He was thinking about Gwyn. He remembered the locked fridge where Crielle cultured bacteria samples and kept all her chemicals. He knew she had some kind of science or chemistry background, but she never told him exactly what she’d done at university. He only knew she was the smartest in her class because once, at a function, he’d overheard some other people speaking about how it was unfair she got to be so beautiful and so smart, and how she was ‘wasting it’ being a housewife for Lludd.

It had been so easy back then to feel proud of her, to love her more than anything, and to laugh quietly to himself because the idea that she was just a housewife must have been a great smokescreen for all the crafty, malicious shit she did in her spare time. He always remembered her being busy, but whether that was doing some kind of white collar crime or working in the lab, he couldn’t be sure.

Food was weird because Crielle was weird about food. She micromanaged everything she ate. If she hired catering, she hardly touched the food herself until she knew exactly what was in it, or she was doctoring it for Gwyn. She had a vendetta against food that tasted good.

When he was older and had his own bank account and credit card, he bought junk food. A lot of it he wanted to share with Gwyn, but Gwyn would never eat it with him, and Efnisien always felt ashamed even having it in his room. It was so stupid. He could stick a knife in a puppy without blinking – at least mostly – but he’d stare at a chocolate bar for hours wondering what Crielle would do if she noticed that he ate it. Which was also stupid because she wouldn’t do anything more except be disappointed in him.

Which he hated.

So he kept a lot of food he never ate and Crielle probably knew about it and never said anything.

And sometimes he had junk food at school where she’d never know. They made small little pizzas at lunch, and he got them all the time.

‘What were you going to say, sweetheart?’ Arden said.

Efnisien blinked himself back to Arden’s house and shrugged. He didn’t know how to start talking about any of it, and it was going to be a mood killer. He reached for something that seemed safe.

‘She mostly just believed that food that tasted good was probably bad for you. It was bad to be excited about food. So it was weird, I guess.’

A loud clattering that made Efnisien flinch, but Arden was already grabbing the pot that must have slipped out of his hand into the sink.

‘Sorry!’ Arden said. ‘God, I’m fucking clumsy sometimes. Sometimes I try and think of how I’d be without the judo and it’s terrifying.’

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Yeah! Yes. It’s great. Look, I know you keep saying that she did everything for you, but ah, for the sake of transparency, I’m not sure I like your aunt very much.’

‘Dr Gary hates her,’ Efnisien said, rolling his eyes.

‘Okay. Okay,’ Arden said, almost to himself. ‘Well. But you know it’s not true, right? Food that’s healthy can taste great. But also like, value judgements about food are just kind of useless? If food makes you _feel_ good, it kind of doesn’t matter that it’s a chocolate chip cookie or whatever. Food is food. It can’t be evil or pure. It’s just food.’

‘It’s a great philosophy,’ Efnisien said. ‘It’s not like I’m against that or anything. I just can’t cook for shit. Crielle never let us anywhere near a kitchen. I mean we had servants, but she was _super_ controlling about food, and she didn’t even really like the servants to be in the kitchen unless it was under her orders. And then like, I dunno, I moved out- I guess I could look on Youtube and learn how. I just keep… You know, my stove is gas, not electric, and the fire’s really pretty and Dr Gary said it’s just a bad idea. Right now.’

‘Was arson your thing back in the day?’ Arden said curiously, even as he set the pot of water on the hob.

‘I mean it wasn’t _not_ my thing,’ Efnisien said, walking over to the bookshelf. He stared at ten books on origami and pulled one of them out. ‘It’s like- I mean you have someone with my personality, and you have fires, and they’re easy to make, and well… Like it wasn’t my _thing,_ but I still did it. It’s just right there. Like it’s _right there._ Like you actually have to try to hurt someone – which sounds terrible, trust me like, I know – but fire is right there, and you don’t even have to try. But Crielle wasn’t really a fan. She got mad if I was stupid about it.’

‘Why? Didn’t she encourage you?’

‘Everything else, yeah. But not fires. Because they were expensive to deal with, the property damage and stuff could cost a lot, and fast,’ Efnisien said, opening the origami book. ‘Hey, is this one of those things that you got obsessed with and then stopped doing?’

 _‘Yes,’_ Arden said firmly, before laughing shortly. ‘Yes, that is one of the things I got obsessed with. Can you have garlic? Onions?’

‘Probably. I’m bad at knowing what’ll set my gut off. And I think sometimes depending on my mood, anything can.’

‘So it’s stress-triggered,’ Arden said.

‘Maybe. Dr Gary was talking about somatic stuff the other day. He seems to think I have at least some…some of it. Actually, no, he said there was definitely somatic stuff going on after the last assessment, but then he never brought it up again. Maybe he forgot.’

‘Maybe. He might be doing that therapist thing of sitting on it until it’s relevant or necessary. Somatic stuff is hard.’

‘Therapy is hard.’

‘It is! It so is. All right. I have to concentrate for a bit, because of like…’ Arden pointed to his head a few times in a short stabbing motion that had Efnisien thinking of knives again. ‘Otherwise I’m going to drop a pot of boiling water on my foot or something. But this won’t take long, and once everything’s set up we can start talking again. Are you good to look at books for a while? Do you want to watch some TV?’

‘I can look at books. Actually um, can I…?’

Efnisien pointed down to the bottom row where all the BDSM books were, and Arden’s eyes widened. Efnisien was pretty sure Arden looked mildly horrified.

‘I don’t have to!’ Efnisien said.

‘I mean- No, I know, hang on, let me think.’ Arden swung away to the fridge and brought out some cheese, and then leaned back against the counter, tugging absently at his hair. ‘Most of the stuff I have down there is rope stuff, and rope stuff is bad for you.’

‘No- It was just that time- It’s just that it always looks so forbidding and like, and…and… _evil.’_

Arden laughed weakly, and closed his eyes. But then he bounced up onto the balls of his feet and sprang over to the bookshelf.

‘You can choose between two options,’ Arden said, pulling out two books. ‘This one is _Leading and Supporting Love,_ which is…one of my favourites actually. The second is _Pastel Shibari Dreams,_ which is a photo book, which I also love to pieces and actually I kind of helped to um, produce it, so there’s some photos of me in there and Efnisien, like…’ Arden only showed Efnisien the back of the hardback, it was clearly a book of photographs. ‘Efnisien I want to be able to go through that form today. I don’t want you pushing yourself too hard because you think you should, okay?’

Efnisien stared at the hardback. It was fairyfloss pink, with fairy-lights all over it. It looked the opposite of what Efnisien had seen on that first book in The Cosy Book Corner.

‘Efnisien, I mean it,’ Arden said firmly.

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said. ‘Um. You could always…give me the first one, and put the other one facedown on the floor and I promise I’ll like, I’ll- If I look, I’ll stop if it feels bad.’

‘And _tell me.’_

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said.’

Arden placed the book facedown on the floor and smiled as he straightened. ‘I mean- If the intrusive thoughts get really bad, or you think they’re going to get bad, tell me. I had one goal for today, and that was to not have to call Dr Gary because you’re basically catatonic, and I so, _so_ don’t want you looking at stuff that’s going to do that to you. But I also know… You’re still kind of curious about it, aren’t you?’

Efnisien flushed and then nodded. He couldn’t explain it. He was repelled by it as well, he felt like a magnet near another magnet, like he wanted to get closer to it, but something shoved at him whenever he thought about it. But it didn’t stop him from being drawn to it in the first place.

‘Well. I’m going to trust you and get back to cooking lunch. Also if we do have to call Dr Gary because you’re having a hard time, that’s like…actually okay. Obviously, I’d like to prevent it, but I don’t want you to feel like you can’t ever- I don’t know. You’re allowed to have a hard time.’

Arden stared ahead into the middle distance and then rolled his eyes.

‘God, I’m a Hallmark card. Okay, I’m going to _cook._ You have to shush until I say you can talk again, okay?’

Efnisien nodded and didn’t say a word, and Arden’s smile was huge, even cheeky. He reached up and ruffled Efnisien’s hair – leaving it a complete mess – and then bounced back into the kitchen.

After a while, Efnisien sat down on the floor, drawing some of the cushions towards himself, and opened the book called _Leading and Supportive Love_. To his surprise, it was more engaging and conversational than he thought it would be, and he lost track of time reading. The smell of fried garlic and onion began to drift through the house, and he looked up sometimes to see Arden either focused over the stove, or setting out plates, grating cheese, buttering bread. Occasionally Arden would hum something to himself, like the fragment of a song, but he always stopped after about a minute, or even only a few seconds, and then he’d switch to something else.

Efnisien wondered if Arden was mentally playing music in his head to concentrate, and almost suggested it’d be fine if Arden just put music on in the background, but he didn’t want to distract him.

The pull of the other book was strong, and eventually Efnisien carefully put down the other book, memorising the page number he was up to, and he reached for the hardback.

He turned it over and stared at the cover.

It was a person’s wrists, bound together in pastel pink rope. The palms faced upwards, and the person’s nails were painted in pink and white, with little gemstones on them. A tangle of fairy lights rested on the ground in soft focus. A hand was placed over the pink ropes around the person’s wrists, almost protective. It looked nothing like anything Efnisien had ever seen before when it came to this stuff.

He opened it carefully, the inside of the book was just another picture of soft focus string lights, these ones stars. The next page was several coils of rope, in pink and pale cream. The title of the book on the next page in pink lettering.

Efnisien’s heart was still pounding, he forced himself to pause, wondering if he was about to think horrible things about Berdella. But as he waited for the images to come, he turned back to the cover instead and stared at it. The ropes didn’t look impossibly tight and the person’s fingers were gently curled, almost cupped, like an offering.

His teeth scraped over his bottom lip as he opened the book again and placed its heavy weight into his lap. He glanced up at Arden, and then looked down at the book again.

He carefully made his way through the pages. The first few were introductions to the models, with photos of different people – of different genders – smiling or laughing. They were all naked, but they seemed comfortable. The backgrounds were slightly different. One was a brick wall with shelves that had lots of pot plants. The other was just a pink wall with a ton of different fairy lights. One model – a handsome older man with greying hair – was in front of a wall that had, weirdly, just a ton of framed family photos.

It was weirdly human. There were short bios. The one with the pot plants talked mostly about how long they’d been into kink for. The one with the pink wall talked about the pets she owned, and how she collected LED lights, and said nothing at all about her kink history. The older man’s bio was about how he used to be a dominant, but became a submissive after his wife died, because it helped him find a quiet mental space in which he could feel cared for, and remember his wife’s care.

Efnisien closed the book abruptly. He put it facedown in front of him.

He knew he was freaking out, but he couldn’t tell why. But he knew he was meant to tell Arden, and after a while he dragged his eyes up and saw Arden staring right at him. He was holding a pot with pasta and the sauce mixed together, using tongs to put it in two bowls.

‘I feel weird,’ Efnisien said. ‘You said to say.’

‘I did,’ Arden said, ‘thank you for telling me. Is it a bad feeling?’

‘I hardly saw _anything._ I didn’t even…I don’t even think I saw all the model photos.’

‘What do you think it was?’

‘The older guy,’ Efnisien said. ‘I dunno. The one with the wife who died.’

‘Oh,’ Arden said quietly, smiling to himself. ‘Mark, yeah. He’s such a sweetheart. Was it that he was older, do you think? Or something else?’

‘I dunno,’ Efnisien said. He forced himself to focus. ‘I’m not having intrusive thoughts or anything. Just…’

_Just feelings._

God, maybe that was normal and he wasn’t being stupid at all. Arden kept serving up the food, and when he held up a plate of grated cheese as though asking if Efnisien wanted any, Efnisien nodded.

‘We included Mark because his story’s so different. Like it’s pretty normal for some submissives to age into becoming dominants, but you hear a lot less about dominants aging into submission,’ Arden said as he finished up and brought the bowls over to the table. Efnisien looked at his serving, which was less than Arden’s, but was still more than he could eat. It smelled so good. Arden returned with a bowl of freshly grated cheese and some buttered bread.

Crielle would have had extra little plates and knives just for the bread. Except that she never ate bread. Efnisien hesitantly reached for one of the pieces. He’d learned from last time that Arden kept really nice bread in his house.

‘You good to eat?’ Arden said, and Efnisien nodded. He tore a tiny piece of crust off and put it in his mouth to make the point that he was fine with eating. Arden spun a whole bunch of pasta onto his fork, shoved it into his mouth and gasped, rocking back on his chair. ‘ _Hot._ Shit.’

Efnisien thought he looked stupid with his hand over his mouth like that, but there was a strange pull in him too, like it was also adorable.

It gave him a clawing feeling in his hands and his fingers, like he wanted to crush it, or like…

Like he’d rip apart anyone who made fun of Arden for being a dork.

Efnisien stared down at his bowl of still-steaming pasta – fettucine, Efnisien thought – and flushed.

‘So,’ Arden said, his mouth still half-full. ‘What did you think the problem was?’

‘I guess it all seemed really human,’ Efnisien said.

‘Well, yeah,’ Arden said, swallowing and clearing his throat. ‘That’s… I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s definitely like a black leather and rubber and latex _aesthetic._ That’s a whole thing, people love it, that’s completely fine. I have a lot of that stuff too because some clients enjoy it and it tends to attract a certain kind of attention in clubs. But it can be any kind of aesthetic you want. Some kind of witchy forest elven leafy aesthetic? That too. Pink and pastel? Also that. One of the reasons we made that book was to remind people that kink is what we make it, and we don’t have to adhere to like…decades of fixation on the colour black.’

Efnisien nodded, then tentatively ate a small bite of the fettucine. He stared off as he focused on what he was eating, he’d not had anything this good in ages. He knew objectively it wasn’t the best meal _ever,_ except how it kind of was.

Arden was watching him intently, and Efnisien gestured vaguely at the bowl.

‘It’s really good,’ he said.

‘Good! I mean if it wasn’t, I could’ve always made sandwiches.’

‘Is the older guy – Mark – is he okay?’ Efnisien asked, before focusing on eating again.

‘Yeah, he’s doing great. I mean he has a lot of grief, and I think he’ll always have that, but I guess you’ll see some more of his journey if you ever look through more of the book. There’s bits of dialogue and interviews with the models, and with us as well. Mark’s one of my regulars. How he is now compared to how he was when I first met him is really amazing. He’s working again, he has like four rescue cats that he adores, and he got into knitting through a couple of other subs that he met in the community and now he runs a knitting group.’

‘Knitting.’

‘I did that for about two years,’ Arden said, laughing before stuffing a huge forkful of food into his mouth. He kind of ate like he was never going to eat again, which was ridiculous, because Arden ate…well, pretty regularly and pretty well, from what Efnisien could tell.

‘How do you find the time to do all this stuff?’ Efnisien said.

‘Yeah,’ Arden said, rolling his eyes. ‘Yeah, that’s like, a lifelong- That’s the thing, right? I kind of don’t. And my life is really full now. I don’t want to give up judo because it keeps me fit and I fucking hate going to the gym. God, I _hate_ it. And then Isabelle requires a lot of care, even if she’s mellowed out a bit now that she’s older. There’s the kink, like, the stuff I do for money, but there’s also stuff I do for my own sanity. And honestly kink can be…time-consuming, it’s not just the scenes, it’s also planning stuff, looking at new gear, researching, going on safety courses and making sure my first aid is up-to-date, checking over old gear, conditioning leather, cleaning and sanitisation, health checks, it adds up? There’s the bookshop. There’s you. And I really like how…things are shaking out. But there’s still a part of my brain that tells me that maybe I should take on a university degree, a language course, and get really good at playing an instrument, and maybe try crochet or something.’

‘It sounds like it’s a pain in the ass,’ Efnisien said.

‘It is,’ Arden said softly. ‘I mean not always. Not always! I _love_ learning, so much. It makes me so happy. But there are times I get like, stuck in it. And then it just makes me anxious and jittery in a way that isn’t about happiness.’

‘You said you take meds for it? What were you like before the meds?’

‘Nuts,’ Arden said, and then burst into laughter. ‘No, okay, some people with ADHD don’t need medication and do okay, but my case was like…I guess kind of serious, and in my childhood it- I loved learning but I was bad at school. I interrupted the teacher all the time, like _all_ the time. I cried if anyone looked at me the wrong way. I came up with games to play during class that were _not_ learning appropriate. I was loud. I slapped my desk if I was excited and I was excited a lot and I slapped that desk _hard_. That was why Laurie came up with judo to just give my body something to _do,_ and it did help, but meds were actually the thing that kind of, I don’t know really, gave me more of a buffer between feeling grounded and feeling like I’m spiralling off into the outer galaxy all the time.’

Efnisien was already slowing down and he thought he’d only had half of the bowl. It was so good he would have happily forced himself to eat the whole thing and then just suffer afterwards, but he didn’t want to sit there talking about the form while his gut was cramping. He’d only managed half a piece of bread.

‘Um.’ Efnisien pointed to the bowl. ‘It’s not that it’s bad, really, I’m just-’

‘You’re full? Do you want to save the rest in case you’re hungry in a couple of hours? You said you mostly ate small meals, right?’

Efnisien nodded. ‘You…don’t mind?’

‘Oh, Ef, I planned on sending you home with like the rest of it,’ Arden said, laughing. ‘You don’t mind if I keep eating?’

Efnisien shook his head.

‘You’re on meds too, right?’ Arden asked.

‘Mmhm,’ Efnisien said. ‘I used to be on a bunch in Hillview, but one of them made me really dopey, and I couldn’t control like, what I said to others very well. Which was bad. Dr Gary still has way more information on me than I want him to because of what they put me on in the hospital before I got into Hillview.’

‘Why were you in the hospital?’

‘Huh?’

‘Why were you in the hospital before Hillview?’

Efnisien felt a tugging of dread, and he looked down. He’d have to say it eventually, wouldn’t he?

‘Did you attempt suicide?’ Arden asked.

‘No,’ Efnisien said. He supposed that was the most obvious reason he’d be there. He was shocked that Arden had asked about suicide so easily, but then realised he liked it. Arden said what he was thinking a lot of the time, and he wasn’t ashamed of it. He just said things. Efnisien spent most of his life either being false and charming, or being way too blunt and crass and knowing that Crielle hated when he wasn’t curtailing himself.

He’d told Bridget about what Crielle did, so he didn’t know why he couldn’t just tell Arden.

‘It’s not…really a big deal,’ Efnisien said, ‘but, um. Well. Shit. I don’t talk about this. But you know how I said my family kind of kicked me out because I did something good?’

Arden nodded slowly.

‘Well, they kind of kicked me out in a way that landed me in the hospital.’

Arden’s brown eyes did that empty thing. Efnisien realised it was a kind of dissociation, some place he had to go to in his brain to process certain information. It was still alarming to see because it was so different to Arden’s normal energy. He wondered if anyone had ever pointed it out to Arden before.

‘I was going to ask you actually,’ Arden said, looking down at this bowl consideringly, before wiping up some of the sauce with some bread, ‘if you had any scars or anything I should be aware of. I know about your digestion issues, but I wanted to know if there was anything else. Especially anywhere I might be touching you under your clothing.’

Efnisien was torn between trying to find a way to hide the fact that he had scars, trying to find a way to say that he had a bunch, and suddenly thinking how much he’d probably die if Arden touched him anywhere under his clothing. The idea of Arden’s hand on his back, or his shoulder, or… _anywhere_ that wasn’t over clothing made it hard to think.

‘You want to, um, touch me?’

‘Mmhm,’ Arden said, before swallowing. ‘Yeah. I do. I’ve actually got massages as one of the things on the form I’d like to be able to do. But yes, provided it’s not an erogenous zone, I’d like to be able to touch you. I’d be sensitive about it. You’re very, ah, let’s say you’re pretty receptive to sensory stimulation, so I don’t want to like, overwhelm you. Well,’ Arden laughed softly and then pinned Efnisien with a look, ‘not too much anyway.’

‘God, you’re the worst,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘I _know._ Anyway, back to scars, you don’t have to tell me what caused them, but… If that kind of touching is something you can see yourself wanting, then I’d like to know. And if there are any I shouldn’t touch, that kind of thing. Actually…wait there a second.’

Arden got up and walked over and grabbed his tablet, unlocking it. He ate the rest of his bread absently as he typed onto the touchpad with one hand.

‘Scars?’ he prompted.

‘Do we…have to do this at the table?’ Efnisien said, and then his face screwed up. ‘I mean I can! I totally can. I don’t want to be difficult. We can- I can-’

‘It’s fine, sweetheart,’ Arden said softly. ‘You already said you didn’t like it, and we can talk about this once we’re sitting back on the floor again, okay?’

Efnisien nodded. One of his hands was already beneath the table, resting tentatively on his gut, over his jumper. Even he didn’t touch his scars directly. He hated them. He could only touch that whole area over clothing. He didn’t even like cleaning it.

‘You want to hear about the time I learned how to make candles?’ Arden said.

It was a clear change of subject, Efnisien nodded gratefully.

‘Great, because it was a _disaster,’_ Arden said, grinning hugely. ‘That’s the story of the time I had to learn how to get a whole pot of wax out of the carpet.’

Arden started talking about how he got into candle making in the first place, and Efnisien exhaled in relief. Efnisien wished he could just be normal, but he didn’t even know what that meant, only that maybe he’d absorb some of it if he spent time with people who weren’t walking catastrophes. It weighed upon him, the knowledge that Arden would find out that there was no end to how fucked up Efnisien was, and that he might get sick of it one day.


	32. Princess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s notes:** Talk of self-harm and cutting in this chapter. Also, the negotiation gets serious.

Efnisien was sitting on the floor, leaning with his back against the couch. Arden sat nearby after having placed the rest of the pasta into a container for Efnisien to take home. And while Arden went through the form, Efnisien wondered how he should talk about his scars.

‘You good with massages?’ Arden said while staring down at the tablet.

‘I mean I think so. I don’t know. I’ve never had one.’

Arden blinked, then nodded and made a note on the tablet.

‘And touching under the clothing? That’s okay too?’

‘I think so,’ Efnisien said, swallowing the knot in his throat and not quite succeeding.

‘Circling back around to scars, is there anywhere I shouldn’t be touching?’

‘Like…maybe…’ Efnisien gestured vaguely to his abdomen. ‘Here. Like, I have- Shit. Okay, um, I actually have a lot of scars. In general. Most of them are fine and you can touch them. It’s just I’ve cut myself a lot, and like, burned myself, and done other things, because- I know it sounds like I was really depressed but I _wasn’t,_ I just used to get really curious and sometimes I was the only thing I could like…experiment on, if that makes sense.’

‘You just called yourself a thing,’ Arden said, frowning at him.

‘I mean the only… I was the only one there to experiment on,’ Efnisien said, not understanding what the big deal was. ‘Anyway so like, they’re not really visible because I had to keep up appearances so I mostly- like it’s not my wrists in a really obvious way or anything. And Crielle made sure I had scalpels and stuff.’

‘To hurt yourself?’ Arden said, looking horrified, and Efnisien burst into bitter, cracking laughter.

‘Uh, no, not to hurt _me.’_

Arden’s expression shifted to a different kind of horror, and Efnisien stopped laughing. He hated that whatever he talked about led back to his family or what he’d done. He hated that it’d probably be like that for the rest of his life. How did Gwyn deal with it? And that was something Efnisien could never ask him, because Gwyn was firstly obviously dealing with it, and secondly, Efnisien was a big part of why he had such a miserable childhood and adolescence in the first place.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said quietly. ‘Uh. No, not to hurt me. Anyway, the upshot is I guess that scalpels don’t actually cause really bad scars. I think I have like two hundred scars just on my thighs, maybe more, but honestly you can only see a few of them and you sort of have to know where to look. You can see more in sunlight. Sometimes I forget how many there are. They’re not…painful to touch and I haven’t lost nerve sensation there. Some are more sensitive. But I wasn’t going deep enough to ruin the nerves most of the time. At least, I don’t think so.’

Efnisien slung his arms over his bent knees and stared at Arden levelly.

‘Bet you really want to touch me now, huh?’

‘I mean, I do,’ Arden said. ‘You’re not scaring me. You’re not the first person I’ve touched with self-harm scars, Ef.’

‘They’re not self-harm scars.’

‘They are,’ Arden said flatly. ‘Maybe you felt like you were doing a science experiment at the time, but you permanently harmed yourself with a scalpel. That’s literally self-harm, even if you weren’t sad or…depressed at the time.’

Efnisien wasn’t really aware of what he’d been feeling at the time, except for the thrill of getting to see blood and connecting that to the stinging sensation he was feeling. He hated cutting deep on his own body, though he was often tempted. Shallow cuts stung more, especially if he took his time.

He didn’t see the point in arguing with Arden, so he shrugged. He wasn’t some emo idiot, he was just…curious about bodies.

‘Anyway, that’s all fine,’ Efnisien said. ‘I mean I don’t know how I’m going to react, but I don’t see any reason to say I don’t want to try it.’

‘Okay,’ Arden said, and then he took a breath and shook his head like a dog and made a note on the tablet. ‘That’s good! We are – dare I say it – actually making progress!’

Efnisien smiled, feeling full and sleepy and low-key anxious. His stomach was sore, but sometimes it was sore no matter what he did.

‘Do you have any problems kneeling?’ Arden said.

‘Not that I know of. Um. Except that it’s like- Like… That’s one of those power things, isn’t it?’

‘Mmhm, yeah. It is. I wouldn’t want you to do it so that you were hurting. I don’t really want that. Sadism isn’t my aim here, so I’d want you to be as comfortable as you reasonably can be. Does the idea of kneeling for me seem bad to you?’

‘Uh.’ Efnisien grasped his knees. ‘Not bad. Just…’

‘Overwhelming?’ Arden suggested.

‘Yeah,’ he said, in a dumb, creaky voice.

‘Good,’ Arden said softly, making a note on the tablet.

_‘Good?’_ Efnisien exclaimed, staring at him.

‘Yes,’ Arden said, smiling. ‘Good. I mean I don’t want you to feel _bad,_ and obviously overwhelming you to the point of feeling bad is not ideal. But otherwise, yeah, I’m going to like that, Ef. I’m going to like that a lot, if the idea of kneeling is kind of overwhelming for you but you’ll try it anyway…that’s perfect.’

_Well, fuck._

Efnisien didn’t understand any of his reactions to what was happening. He knew that some of it was just wanting to know what it was like, to know once and for all if he’d hate it. He felt like the images of Berdella were closer somehow, like part of his brain wanted to prove that it would be terrible.

‘I might hate it,’ Efnisien said.

‘Then we stop,’ Arden said. ‘We stop, I make sure you’re okay, and we talk about it when you feel up to talking about it.’

It was like a small forcefield went up in his mind between the images of Berdella’s crimes and everything else. Arden’s words circled around them. It didn’t make them go away, but it made it harder to be afraid.

This was so different to what he thought BDSM was. This was a whole other language.

Efnisien supposed it was like how other people mostly used stoves to cook, and Efnisien kind of used them to set things on fire.

He gestured to his abdomen again. ‘I don’t know if I said, but… I have scars here that I don’t want you to, um, touch. Are you going to want to see them?’

‘If you don’t want me to, I don’t have to,’ Arden said. ‘But massages are easier if you’re topless.’

‘They’re really bad,’ Efnisien said, his voice so quiet now he was almost whispering. ‘They’re so ugly.’

‘Were you shot?’ Arden said.

Efnisien was surprised Arden just asked those things, like asking if Efnisien had attempted suicide before, and asking now if he was shot. He just _asked._ But in some ways it made it easier.

Though nothing about this was easy.

‘Uh, no,’ Efnisien said. ‘No. I was stabbed. Um. Badly. Kind of. Not that badly. Not really that badly. But then I… But then things got infected and you know scars can get weird if there’s infection.’

‘I know,’ Arden said quietly. ‘I’ve seen a lot of scars, Efnisien. I’m sorry that happened to you.’

‘It wasn’t that bad,’ Efnisien said, holding onto the words so hard that he almost couldn’t think. His mouth tasted metallic, which was stupid, there was no blood there. None at all. Maybe he wouldn’t ever need to take his jumper or shirt off around Arden. He didn’t need to be massaged or anything. He could still kneel.

Arden looked like he wanted to argue, but he did that thing that Dr Gary did, which was just…have the look on his face without letting the words come out.

What Crielle did was harder to think about in general. Dr Gary kept calling it attempted murder, and it wasn’t like that at all. She felt betrayed, she was upset with him. And he deserved it, he’d _so_ earned that response, he’d been terrible to her. She deserved so much better. He wanted to be good for her, and instead he failed, over and over again.

In the end it hadn’t even been some kind of passive failure where he hadn’t done enough. He’d turned against her.

‘Efnisien?’ Arden prompted gently.

‘I don’t talk about it much,’ Efnisien said. ‘Any of it. Anything. Sorry. We’re meant to be focusing on the form. That’s- That’s a way better thing to focus on.’

‘That’s just it, baby. This stuff is tied into it, one way or another. Sometimes kink is trauma-adjacent. It just _is._ It was for me, for the longest time. And I suppose it still is when you look at the fact that I don’t bottom for anyone, _ever._ I’m happy with things being that way, but there was a time when even the thought that someone might want me to – because I’m short and I’m not like, super stocky – made me avoid all the kink clubs, because I was scared of someone making assumptions about me and what I liked. Even someone coming onto me that way, even someone just teasing me about it – that was a huge no for me. And actually, I still hate it.’

Arden scrolled down the tablet and smiled ruefully.

‘It’s probably a good time to talk about my limits,’ he said. ‘Are you okay to do that?’

Efnisien nodded vigorously. He knew he was going to hurt Arden by just…by just existing and being who he was. The more he knew not to do, the better.

‘Okay, firstly, I don’t want you to ever tease or joke about being on top in the relationship. Not even in passing, and definitely not around other people. Which is the lead-in to the fact that I don’t bottom for people. I don’t just mean in the crudest sense – like getting fucked anally – I mean things like…I’m not going to lie beneath you while you’re on top, except in the most specific circumstances that I create and control. I’m not going to want you to control kissing or touching. And while I feel like this one is obvious, I don’t want you reaching between my legs for any reason, ever, unless you have explicit and clear permission. Even if this becomes sexual, that will _always_ be a limit.’

‘You’re going to give me a copy of the form, right?’ Efnisien said, because the idea of forgetting any of these terrified him. Arden nodded.

‘I use safewords too,’ he said. ‘I’ll sometimes use them on your behalf, if I feel like you’re not using them enough – which will give you an idea of about when I think will be a good time for you to be using; sort of what I mentioned before with the conditioning. I definitely use them for me. I’ll use the traffic light system with the two of us, and I’ll try and remember to use blue so that we can remember the word together. Sometimes something might remind me of Laurie – even something I’m doing – and I just… It’s good to have an out. It hardly ever happens now, and I don’t really expect it to happen with us, but you know… I don’t want you to not have a warning about it.’

Arden stretched his legs out and knocked the balls of his feet together repeatedly as he looked at the form.

‘There’s minor things too. I don’t want you to call me ‘sir’ or ‘master’ or anything like that. Some of my clients can do that, but I don’t want you to do that with me, I just want you to call me Arden. That’s less of a limit and more of a rule though. You don’t really seem inclined to call me sir anyway.’

‘That’d be weird,’ Efnisien admitted.

‘It’s so nice when we’re on the same page,’ Arden said, smiling and modifying the form as he talked. ‘Um. Other limits – the one you already do, where you don’t touch me without asking first? I love that. In fact that’s one of those things that…like generally I’m fine if people return hugs and return touches I’ve initiated. But the fact that you still ask- I know I told you that you didn’t have to, but I think I really like it.’

‘Really?’ Efnisien said, and Arden nodded, his eyes warm.

‘It’s one of those things where I didn’t know how much I’d like it until someone did that, and that someone happened to be you. Just- Look, talk to me if you ever feel like you don’t like it anymore. I do let people just reciprocate hugs once I’ve initiated one. So while I like that you ask, if you ever start to feel uncomfortable, please tell me so that we can talk about it?’

Efnisien nodded. But the truth was he didn’t mind asking. He didn’t want to get it wrong, and just touching Arden back, or hugging him back, sometimes felt like breaking a rule. He was painfully aware of the things he’d done to other people, and he was painfully aware of what Laurie had done to Arden. It tangled up in his head until all he knew was that he had to ask permission, and that he couldn’t take touching someone’s body for granted.

Probably not ever again.

‘And this might seem like a bit of a double standard,’ Arden said ruefully, ‘but I don’t like pet names.’

‘Oh my god,’ Efnisien said, surprising himself by laughing. ‘Seriously?’

‘I know,’ Arden said, and he dragged a hand through his hair a few times. ‘I _know.’_

‘So I can’t call you…’

Efnisien wondered if that counted as teasing, the wrong kind of teasing. He swallowed the word down, then shook his head.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was going to tease.’

‘Oh boy,’ Arden said softly. ‘Okay. You can still tease me, Efnisien, in general. Especially outside of scenes.’

‘But if pet names are something that you get to use as a- as- as someone who holds more control, and they’re not something I get to use, then isn’t teasing you about them…doesn’t that count as teasing about holding more power in the relationship?’

Arden’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You’ve kind of got me there.’

‘Hell yeah,’ Efnisien said.

‘You’re not banned from teasing me _ever again,’_ Arden said.

‘Yeah, I just- I know me. It’s probably best if I just don’t start. I didn’t think you’d not like pet names though.’

‘Mm,’ Arden rolled onto his back and wiggled until his head was on a cushion. ‘Here’s the thing. I’ve kind of been the shorter kid all my life, and pet names are iffy, they’re _definitely_ used more with short cute-looking people than with say, six foot muscle chunks, and trust me, I notice. So that’s a big one. People always think I look younger than I do, and when you’re a dominant in the kink world, sometimes that’s a pain in the ass! Like it’s fine now that I have a reputation in most of the clubs, but newbies _still_ come up to me – me in my full leather dom get-up with like a black flogger hanging out of my belt – and ask me where my fucking daddy is.’

Efnisien burst into raucous laughter, and Arden followed suit with his childlike guffaw. Efnisien rocked on his hips a few times, then grabbed a cushion nearby and dragged it into his lap, resting his arms on it.

‘Oh god,’ Efnisien breathed. ‘I’m trying to imagine the look on your face.’

‘I get mad,’ Arden said. ‘And I have to be professional! Thankfully, I have some rote responses, my favourite being: ‘I’m the fucking daddy.’’

Efnisien giggled, then placed a hand over his mouth, surprised at the sound. He used to only hear laughter like that when he was torturing or hurting someone, and he had no control over it when it happened. It felt different this time. Warmer and nicer.

‘Speaking of pet names,’ Arden said, handing over the tablet. ‘Here’s the list. The ones at the top are the ones I’d like to use on a regular basis. The ones at the bottom are ones I’d save for scenes only.’

The tablet was warm from Arden’s hands, the echo of his body heat pressing against Efnisien’s palms. He stared at the list, this time for much longer than before. The first list looked mostly fine, but the second one he got stuck on immediately. He could feel the way his face flushed, even his neck.

‘Uh. Some of these are like… are really feminine,’ Efnisien said weakly.

‘I know,’ Arden said. ‘They are.’

‘I’m not a girl.’

‘I know,’ Arden said. ‘You’re not. And I don’t have to use them. I’d like to though, because you’re, ah…receptive to them. Remember when I mentioned soft humiliation before? I’m sort of well aware that some of the terms, like ‘princess,’ might be difficult to hear. That’s why I’d only save it for scenes, only in certain contexts. Like I might tell you that you’ve done very well, or I might say that you’re my princess, and no one else’s. Something that you only get to be for me, and no one else.’

‘Okay. Oh my god.’ Efnisien lowered his head and then placed a hand over his face.

‘Talk to me, Ef.’

‘No, it’s just- Look, I’m not saying no, it’s just… It’s just wild to me that you know exactly- Like you _know_ that it’s going to fuck me up, and you still want to do it, right? That’s it, right?’

‘Yep,’ Arden said. ‘That’s basically it. I’m not going to pretend it isn’t. It just depends on if it’s a kind of fucked up you _want_ to try, or if it’s one you don’t.’

Efnisien thrust the tablet at Arden. ‘They’re all fine. I hate knowing that. I hate that. Why am I like this? What the fuck is wrong with me?’

Arden sat up immediately, crawling over, ignoring the tablet. ‘Okay, that’s not the kind of fucked up I meant.’

‘I mean I know there’s so much stuff wrong with me,’ Efnisien said through his fingers. ‘I _know_ that, I was in Hillview for like a year and I’m still technically an outpatient, but like… why would I be fine with this? Why would anyone?’

Arden leaned into him without even announcing the hug, and then pushed Efnisien down to the ground, so that he landed on a bunch of cushions. Efnisien’s arms flailed, panic rose instinctively. He hadn’t expected it, but then he realised his head was on a cushion and Arden was facing him, his expression serious. He relaxed a little, the panic abating.

‘I don’t have to use any of them,’ Arden said.

‘But that’s not it!’ Efnisien exclaimed, even as one of Arden’s arms wrapped around him and pulled him in.

Shit, they were so close, and they were on the floor, and Arden was _right there._ Efnisien went from having so many trains of thought in his head he couldn’t decide which one to say, to laying there, still, because something happened to him when Arden touched him like this. He blinked quietly, and then pressed his lips together.

‘You fight dirty,’ Efnisien said.

‘I do,’ Arden said, his lips twitching. ‘And now we’ve got to talk about it, because there’s nothing _wrong_ with you when it comes to this stuff. Why do you think there is?’

‘Because…’

Because Crielle would’ve hated it. Because he was supposed to be manly, and strong, and he was meant to be like a patriarch, almost like the other guy in the house when Lludd wasn’t pulling his fucking weight as a husband, which was most of the time because he wasn’t always home and he was a shitty husband. He served Crielle, but Efnisien didn’t think Lludd _loved_ her like he should.

Efnisien wasn’t supposed to like soft things or nice things or colours or even music that wasn’t opera. Because looking at the list and seeing words like ‘babygirl’ made something in his head break open, and he both couldn’t stand it, and needed to hear Arden say it, and say it specifically to _him._

‘What do you think will happen if I use those pet names?’ Arden said.

‘What if I like them?’

‘What if you do? Is the world going to end? I can easily _not_ say them, but I think that’s not the problem here. Efnisien, look- This goes beyond… Most men have a problem with things like this. Hell, most _people_ do. Even women who want to be seen as strong and resilient will sometimes feel torn about the fact that they like being called ‘babygirl’ in a scene. Sometimes- Sometimes we do things in scenes specifically because they mess with society’s expectations, because they fuck with how society tried to fuck us up in the first place. Men are supposed to be tough right? And unemotional? It’s _bullshit._ But we’re going to be doing something that makes you vulnerable. You want to be soft for me. It’s already challenging. I understand that, I respect that, and I still kind of want to mess you up with it.’

Arden reached out while frowning and curled some of Efnisien’s hair around his fingers.

‘But I don’t want to _hurt_ you with it. Okay? Do you want to table the second list until you tell me it’s okay?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said plaintively.

‘That’s the part you hate, isn’t it?’

Efnisien nodded.

‘This is probably the worst or the best time to tell you I’m curious about trying feminisation with you,’ Arden said, rubbing Efnisien’s back. At the look on Efnisien’s face, he laughed.

‘What does that even _mean?’_ Efnisien said.

‘Well, lots of things to different people. I’d only want to do it very, very gently with you. And not at first. So maybe, um, well, I might put some lipstick on you during a scene. Or I might want to shave your legs. Or see you in stockings. That kind of thing. There, you can’t possibly think you’re the weird one when I’m the one dreaming up this stuff, right? And I don’t even think it’s weird. But you’re welcome to think I’m a pervert.’

Efnisien ducked his head, and when Arden pulled him so close that his forehead was resting on Arden’s shoulder, he didn’t resist. He couldn’t even _think._

‘Maybe we should stop there,’ Arden said. ‘We can pick this up another-’

‘I want you to tie me up.’

Arden went still, even the hand moving soothingly on Efnisien’s back stopped. ‘Huh?’

‘I know,’ Efnisien breathed, feeling a little sick. ‘I know. I know it’s bad.’

‘Huh? No. It’s _not_ \- You- Sweet baby Jesus, let me think for a moment.’ Arden was only silent for about three seconds before he said: ‘What made you think about it? The book?’

‘Um. A little. It’s kind of been there in the background.’

‘Okay,’ Arden said, his fingers curling into Efnisien’s back. ‘All right. But I’m not doing it with you in the first scene, or even the second, and I want to talk to you about it in the future. I’m not ruling it out, but sweetheart, I saw how you reacted to seeing it in the bookstore. If we’re going to do that, we’re going to do that _slow._ For my sake. Goddamn you suggesting it took about a year off of my life.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t- I shouldn’t have-’

‘No, no, no, it was really good that you brought it up. Really good. Although it does kind of make me wonder if you’re… a lot more into limit-pushing than I thought you were. But whatever, I’ll put it on the tablet, and then I’m going to table it until after our first scene together, which I assure you is going to be _very tame_ compared to like most of the things we talked about today.’

Efnisien said nothing at all. He was amazed that Arden hadn’t completely rejected his suggestion after his evident shock. He supposed it was a sign that Arden didn’t just want to tie him up and leave him to suffer alone on a bed. But it alarmed in another way, because maybe Arden could see all the ways Efnisien was going to break down, and Efnisien couldn’t see them yet.

But Arden’s arm was around him, his hand strong as he stroked little circles and patterns into his back, none of them seeming absent-minded even though they were all random. There was a weight in the way Arden carefully put his hand down sometimes, like he was completely aware of Efnisien and wanted to treat him gently. But then his touch would be firm and containing, and Efnisien found himself feeling less alarmed, less anxious.

‘I don’t think we covered it specifically,’ Arden said, his voice deeper than before. ‘Are you a yes or no to trying feminisation?’

‘You said you weren’t doing it straight away, right?’

‘Yeah. I might use some of the pet names though. But not outright acts otherwise. What do you think?’

‘I’ll…try it, I guess. Is that something you’re into? Like, with other people?’

‘Yeah,’ Arden said. ‘Sometimes. It’s more like I get this instinct with regards to what might suit some people but not others. I mean obviously I like messing with masculinity and femininity, given I did drag for such a long time. But it’s also that you’re like, exceedingly pretty. And…’

Arden laughed softly, his hand coming up to the back of Efnisien’s head and pressing it down to his shoulder.

‘And pretty things should be cherished, sweetheart,’ Arden said, his voice that sultry tone he could pull out whenever he wanted, it seemed. ‘Would you like that? To be cherished?’

Efnisien’s whole body was doing _something._ He couldn’t even reply. After a while of putting it off, he had to clear his throat. Arden’s fingers were strong on the back of his head, actually keeping him in place, and Efnisien realised that when Arden said he liked to be controlling most of the time…

He’d probably been really holding himself back for a while. Maybe he was still holding back now.

‘Would you like that, sweetface?’ Arden said, something teasing and warm in his voice.

‘I… I don’t know.’

‘Well, maybe you’ll find out.’

Arden’s fingers moved slowly over the back of his head, massaging his scalp, and Efnisien thought that the floor was hard, and not super comfortable, and he didn’t give the remotest shit about it while Arden was touching him like that.

‘You’re already…kind of doing it, aren’t you?’ Efnisien said. ‘Um, the whole- Control thing.’

‘Yeah,’ Arden said. ‘Especially today. I have more tacit permission today. What do you think? Do you like it?’

‘I mean- You know, you don’t have to keep asking me if I like it. It’s not like I’ve been acting like today’s the worst or anything. You could stop asking me.’

‘Maybe I want to hear you say that you like it, baby,’ Arden said, his voice low. ‘Won’t you tell me that you like it?’

It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. He was so used to his connections with people being, well, not really connections at all. But with the people who mattered, Crielle and Gwyn, there’d never been anything like this. And he loved them. He _loved_ them. He thought he had…he thought he had something profound with both of them. Efnisien shivered, and Arden laughed in an indulgent way, rocking a little into Efnisien before settling back into place. ‘I felt that, sweetheart.’

It was impossible to speak. Efnisien’s voice vanished. He was fairly sure that Arden wasn’t waiting for him to say that he liked it anymore, and as he breathed out – into Arden’s black shirt – he felt a strange mingling of excitement and guilt.

He knew he didn’t deserve this. He knew. It was too good. It was scary, but it was too good.

But he was selfish, cruel, greedy. He was bad at rejecting the things he was supposed to reject, the things that made the consequences of his actions clear.

‘Arden?’ Efnisien asked quietly.

‘Mm?’

‘Am I your boyfriend?’

‘We can be boyfriends,’ Arden said, and then he pulled back and Efnisien looked up at him. Arden’s expression was soft. ‘I know you’ll disagree with me, but you’re an extraordinarily sweet person. I can’t tell if you were always like this, or if it was something you grew into, but I almost hope it was the latter.’

‘Why?’ Efnisien didn’t think he was sweet at all. He could probably get behind shy – because he remembered Crielle singling that out when he was little – but definitely not sweet.

‘Because if it was the former…’ Arden’s expression changed. ‘I don’t know. That’s probably a bizarre thing to think about anyway, right? Also, ah, for the record, that list of stuff we went through isn’t exhaustive. Other stuff will come up. I just think it’s a good place to start.’

‘Okay.’

‘You want to watch some TV now?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘Also, um. I know you have no time- Like hardly any time, so you could probably see me less if you wanted to, which wasn’t what I was going to say. Shit. Sometimes I want to see you more than like, once a week. And I don’t know if I can do the bookstore for…for a little while. I mean I probably could, but I just don’t know right now.’

Efnisien sighed.

‘So we’re probably going to see each other less.’

‘That was the most amazing ‘can we see each other more’ I’ve heard in my _entire_ life,’ Arden said with wide eyes. ‘You literally started by shooting yourself in the foot, getting out the message, and then shooting yourself in the other foot. That’s really- Wow. Kudos to you, sweetheart, that’s impressive.’

‘Shut up,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘We _can_ see each other more,’ Arden said, shaking Efnisien’s shoulder gently. ‘I’ll need to think about it, and it probably can’t be to a schedule. Are you open to me suggesting we catch up during the week sometimes? You can always say no.’

Efnisien nodded in what he thought was a normal way, and not the super excited way he wanted to.

‘And we can talk about the possibility of you staying the night or something, sometimes. I have a spare room, if you’re not comfortable sleeping in the same bed as me, but that might be something to consider as well. I was going to suggest it anyway for any scenes that might make you feel a little out of it. But also I think it’d be fun.’

‘Fun is good,’ Efnisien said, feeling like he had to say something even though his brain was still stuck on the idea of spending the night with Arden, and seeing him first thing in the morning.

‘It is,’ Arden said. ‘Let’s move to the couch, Ef, there’s a whole bunch of bakers we need to catch up on. And then maybe you can have some more pasta? Or something else if you want?’

Efnisien nodded to stop himself from saying he didn’t need anymore food, to stop himself from saying something stupid. Arden beamed at him and drew him close once more, and Efnisien let his head drop to Arden’s shoulder. His eyes closed.

He wanted this feeling, this moment, and he realised someone could come in and shoot him and he’d be fine with it.

He’d be fine with it, because it meant he got to have something like this, even if just for a little while.


	33. Snail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've written so many tiny little notes on my phone about the next few chapters. I think about this story so much even though it's been months. [I add new songs to the playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7GCCSe1PiZ8D2apCHPVpyk?si=ZTKtvoAYSLS65-VwVC84rg). Look I'm still in shock that I ended up writing a story about Efnisien and it might actually be not only my favourite thing that I've written this year, but maybe like, in four years? x.x
> 
> And it doesn't have my best writing and it's not fast-paced and it's not a momentous epic story and it's just two boys and idk like genuinely idk and I'm sure some of you don't either but I'm so so grateful and glad you're all here reading this as I write it. <333 HA I AM A SAP

Efnisien woke on Monday morning to the sound of rain. He’d gone to bed late after doing a lot of transcription for Professor Adayemi. She tended to send him a whole bunch of files at once, often late at night, and he worked harder for her because he got the sense that she was antsy about getting her papers done quickly. She published articles all the time from what he could tell, she never seemed to sleep.

More than that, he enjoyed all of her work. He liked listening to her voice, he liked how she introduced him to new terms. He thought he was pretty on the money when it came to anthropology and sociology now that he’d done audio transcription for Chandra and others in the field. But Professor Adayemi was on a whole other level and he enjoyed he challenge of researching and learning niche concepts.

Arden had sent him a copy of the form via email, and Efnisien had gone through it several times already. That side of his life hardly seemed real. Like a bubble that might burst at any moment, but shiny enough that he liked looking at it all the time.

As he listened to the rain and felt strangely peaceful, he scrolled through the document again and pressed his lips together.

He was anxious and uncomfortable and nervous and excited. He tried not to think about it too hard. He tried not to imagine Arden’s hands on his bare skin, because he didn’t know how to process something like that. He wasn’t even really sure what it’d feel like. Crielle touched his face, and sometimes his hands, and sometimes she straightened his clothes while tailoring. Otherwise, the only other people who’d really ever touched him, were like nurses when they changed dressings.

Eventually he rested his phone on his chest and listened to the weather.

It sounded like the inside of his mind when he couldn’t think, and that was strangely soothing. Like the whole world couldn’t think either and was throwing rain at the ground because of it. Efnisien thought it was nice to know it wasn’t just him.

After a while he got up and showered. He looked at Arden’s pasta in the fridge and thought that if he could ever get over his renewed fear of leaving his apartment block and heading to the store, he’d get some bread to go with it. That’d make it last longer.

He made porridge and overcooked it and held the warm bowl in his hands as he ate, thinking that somehow the porridge he was eating – made with water and unsweetened, unsalted – tasted like the rain falling outside. Nothingy and constant and grey.

He washed his bowl and stared at the bag of rubbish and then tied it up and decided to take it out. As he took the elevator down to the ground level, he rested the bag against his leg and let his mind empty.

The rain was heavier and louder when he exited into the underground carpark. He walked over to the giant bins and tossed his bag inside, then stood there for a while, looking towards one of the exits out into the wider world. The rain was hammering down. Big fat drops, the dimness of heavy clouds.

He’d never really noticed storms properly before. He thought that maybe he could feel the hum of the rain constantly falling on the ground through his feet. Maybe he was imagining it. He could feel the wetness in the air, and when he breathed in, he felt it sticking to his lungs and his throat.

As he stared blankly ahead, a tiny bit of movement caught his attention – a glint of light that was different to the sheen of rain on different surfaces.

A large garden snail, gamely making its way towards the cars. Efnisien frowned at it, then walked over.

As a kid, he’d stepped on snails. He’d stepped on any living thing he could step on. He’d always thought the crunch of the shell was satisfying, and he liked the way the body of the animal still moved a little after death, like it was shrinking in on itself in pain. Maybe it was. Efnisien stared down at the snail. He imagined stepping on it, but he didn’t really want to.

He crouched in front of it, watching it as it moved on its single foot towards a destination that didn’t look like it’d provide any food at all.

‘Hey, little buddy,’ Efnisien said, looking at its weird eye stalks waving around.

He stood and walked away and then hesitated, turning back. There was really nothing to eat where the cars were, and it’d probably get run over, and it was just a fucking _snail,_ and it didn’t matter. Crielle hated them. The gardens at their state when he was a child were constantly filled with snail bait and the empty, whitening shells of dead snails.

He walked back over to the snail and crouched by it again, and then as carefully as he could, he picked it up by its shell. It shrunk into itself immediately, its eyes and body pulling in. Efnisien frowned as he rested it in the palm of his hand and looked around. He could feel its body against him, sticky and cold. His fingers curled protectively around it.

There were little patches of grass beyond the apartment building. There were areas planted in by the council or the people who maintained the building. Efnisien didn’t really know.

As he stared towards the heavy, brutal rain, the snail unfurled and poked one of its eyes out. Efnisien thought it looked curious. And then the snail stretched out and Efnisien felt the sensation of it moving on his palm and shuddered, because it felt fucking _weird._

The snail moved around, then after reaching up like it thought there might be leaves above it, it rested fully on Efnisien’s palm.

That was when he felt a tiny scraping sensation, kind of ticklish, and he realised the snail was making the sensation where its _mouth_ was. He stared at it, and his eyes widened.

‘Are you fucking trying to _eat_ me?’ he exclaimed. ‘What the shit?’

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and typed ‘snail mouth’ one handed into his phone. That was how he learned that the snail _was_ trying to eat him, by scraping its radula – rows and rows of sharp little rasps – against his skin. Probably it was getting the minerals or something. Garden snails weren’t carnivores. But it must have been hungry, and Efnisien stared at it, kind of impressed that this tiny thing thought that Efnisien was both a decent food source, and seemed completely nonplussed at being held by a giant being.

Probably it didn’t understand Efnisien was another animal. Maybe snails didn’t have brains. They were molluscs, weren’t they? So surely they didn’t have brains, even if they had an obvious head. Efnisien googled that in while he felt the steady scrape, scrape, scrape of a snail that seemed perfectly content to try and ruin Efnisien’s hand.

It didn’t hurt at all. It just felt like tiny, light scratches.

Snails didn’t have brains. Land snails had collections of ganglia, and didn’t have a spine or a brain otherwise.

‘So you’re kind of dumb, but not really,’ Efnisien said, and then walked towards the entrance nearest to him.

Its name was _Cornu aspersum._ He supposed it wasn’t really, because snails probably didn’t have names and they couldn’t all be _Cornu aspersum._ But he thought it was kind of a cool name. It used to be called _Helix aspersa._ That was cool too.

It was still eating his hand.

‘Good luck with that,’ Efnisien said under his breath once he was close enough to the rain to feel the sharp drop in temperature, stray drops hitting his sneakers. He looked around. There was a huge tree with only dirt beneath it which didn’t seem really suitable. There was a patch of grass, but he didn’t think the snail would do well on grass. Across the street there was a little bit of garden by another apartment building. A lot of green plants and leaf litter. They ate that. The snail would be happier there.

He looked around. There was hardly anyone about. It was too late for the 9-to-5 business crowd, Efnisien had woken too late for the rush. Occasionally a car drove by and misted up the rain.

Efnisien didn’t think that guy who had hit him would be waiting for him, even though his heart still pounded. Maybe he’d have to talk to Dr Gary about that again. So fucking annoying.

‘Okay,’ he said to himself, then closed his hand around the snail. The snail startled and pulled in on itself.

He ran across the road – he was stupid for only wearing a shirt and not a jumper – his feet splashing into deep puddles. He looked at all of the plants and saw a patch that looked almost dry beneath one of them with lots and lots of leaf litter. He carefully peeled the clinging snail from his palm and put it down on the ground beneath the plant.

His hand was itchy.

He ran back across the road, his hair already soaked. And then he was back in the elevator, listening to the rapid drip-drip-drip of water from his shirt and his hair and rolled his eyes and held his sticky, slimy hand in front of himself so that he could clean it once he got back to his apartment.

He washed his hands, changed his shirt, and towelled his hair off. He should probably shower again but couldn’t be fucked. After a while he prodded at his palm, trying to feel where the snail had been. There wasn’t even a red mark where it had been attempting to treat his palm as a leaf.

For the next hour he imagined stepping on snails, or going back outside and finding the one that he’d held and pulling it out of his shell, and with great exasperation he put tallies on the whiteboard of his fridge. He thought it was the first time he’d associated intrusive thoughts with pure tedium.

*

He slept hard in the afternoon, like he’d finished running several marathons. He knew something was going on in his head, but not what, and he didn’t bother pushing at it because he didn’t want his Monday to be shit. He knew stuff with Arden was intense. He’d been having a lot of epic sessions with Dr Gary. He was part of a _choir_ now. His brain could just deal with it.

Around four he realised what was going on as he pushed his phone between his hands on the table, back and forth, watching it skid and slide between his fingers.

He felt sick.

After a few minutes he grabbed his phone and sent a quick text message, only paying enough attention to make sure he didn’t type any spelling errors:

_Was thinking we shouldn’t catch up for the next two weeks, maybe after that instead?_

He slammed his phone face down and felt shaky. There was a voice in his head screaming _‘what are you doing?’_ over and over again, in an increasingly hysterical voice. Maybe he should’ve talked to Dr Gary about it first, except he knew Dr Gary wouldn’t be mad. That was the strangest thing. Dr Gary wouldn’t be mad.

‘Parole officer,’ Efnisien whispered.

His phone buzzed hard and he startled, rocking back in his chair before realising that Gwyn was actually calling him.

Gwyn. _Calling._

Efnisien gulped and grabbed his phone, answering it, feeling the same twisty butterfly sensation he felt when he talked to Arden. Except this was way worse.

‘What have you done?’ Gwyn said.

Efnisien stared ahead, then looked around his apartment. ‘No, nothing, I just thought-’

‘What’s changed that you don’t want to see me this month?’

_What have you done?_

Efnisien wanted to say so many savage things, but he deflated until his head rested against the table.

‘It’s just two weeks,’ Efnisien said weakly.

‘Well, I don’t think it’s a good idea. I’m coming on Thursday morning, like normal.’

‘Um. Listen, I get- I get what you’re thinking, but it’s honestly just two weeks and-’

‘You’ve said yourself that my visits help keep you focused on your recovery,’ Gwyn said. He sounded like a businessman talking to an underling. Efnisien dropped his other arm beneath the table and knuckled his fist into his stomach. Stupid aching stomach. Why didn’t it give him a fucking break for once?

‘I know, but like, I have friends now, and I go to choir, and-’

‘ _Choir?’_

‘Dr Gary said I should join a group.’

‘He thought that was a good idea? You participating with other people like that? Crielle didn’t want you in groups. You could hurt people too obviously.’

‘No, that’s not why she- That’s…’

He stared at the point where the wall met the ceiling. In Arden’s place, there were cornices. In his place, there was just…a corner.

‘He did think it was a good idea,’ Efnisien said finally. ‘He wouldn’t have suggested it, like, otherwise. It wasn’t like I was jumping for joy at the suggestion.’

_Parole officer._

They weren’t even like cousins anymore. Somewhere along the way, their connection had vanished, and Gwyn bought a book and gave it to him, and he made sure Efnisien was in his apartment – _cell_ – and then he went home and probably worried about what would happen to other people if Efnisien went out to buy groceries.

It was so tempting to talk about the snail he’d saved but it felt so stupid, so insignificant compared to everything else he’d done, everything else he _could_ do. Gwyn was the one standing there on scars Efnisien had made.

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said, his voice flat. ‘Thursday morning, same time?’

A long pause. Gwyn cleared his throat. ‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘See you then.’

‘I’m just concerned, that’s all,’ Gwyn said.

‘No, no, I get it. I do. It’s fine. Maybe you won’t feel concerned if you see me on Thursday. So, um. I’ll see you then.’

‘Okay, good. I have to go, work’s wrapping up soon.’

‘Cool.’

After the phone call ended, Efnisien put his phone facedown on the table and fell still. All the nervous energy from before vanished. It wasn’t like he’d calmed, but like something in him had been weighed down by stones.

They weren’t even like cousins anymore. And maybe they’d never really been like cousins, and Efnisien was the only one who didn’t know that.

*

Efnisien wasn’t really in the mood for choir practice when he turned up on Wednesday night. He’d done some practicing, but he could feel his heart wasn’t really in it, and he was scared of singing too loudly in his apartment in case he bothered his neighbours. He didn’t want to get kicked out. He didn’t want to have to find some other shitty place to live.

Arden couldn’t see him until Friday, and Efnisien couldn’t bring himself to walk to the bookshop at all. He’d already finished the _Queer Nature_ book and maybe needed to ask Arden to start sending him pictures of books that Efnisien could pay for over the phone, except that felt weak compared to going in and buying them.

Trixie was at the hall, waving vigorously and wildly. Efnisien waved back. He watched the others mingling and talking, and he leaned against the wall and stared down at his music and didn’t want to talk to anyone.

‘Hey, twink,’ said a rough, husky voice. He looked up and his heart managed to do some kind of weird happy hiccup that made him nearly drop his sheet music.

‘Bridge,’ he said, smiling.

Her smile was small and tired, but it seemed real. She looked around and then arched an eyebrow at him.

‘Why’re you being such a loner?’ she said. ‘Come join the dykes.’

‘Huh?’

‘Come on,’ she said, reaching out and grabbing his shirt sleeve without even asking and dragging him towards a group of women who were talking about five different subjects without missing a beat. Bridge went straight back to arguing that stevia was the worst thing she’d ever tasted in her whole life and she’d made the mistake of tasting a man’s come once and Efnisien didn’t mean to laugh but he did, but others were laughing too, and it was okay. He wasn’t behaving badly.

He didn’t say much, acutely aware of the fact that he was with the _women,_ and that at any moment, his brain would start showing him things he didn’t want to-

There it was.

He didn’t vanish from the room, but his brain ran two channels. The one where he paid attention and was even having a kind of okay time and not saying much, and the channel where he imagined hurting some of them, or pushing them up against walls, or the looks on their faces if he had a hand between their legs, or the sounds they’d make. One channel that made him feel like choir was okay, the other that made him feel nauseated and terrible.

The last channel won. By the time Anthony called them all to stand in their sections, Efnisien wanted to grab a wire brush and shove it into both of his eyes until he shredded his optic nerves and his brain and couldn’t _think_ anymore.

Singing made everything worse until it didn’t. One moment he was trying to remember how to translate notes into sounds, the next he was _in_ the song, and everyone else was in it, and he was standing there with wide eyes, his hands gripping the paper tightly even though some of the others used music stands. He wasn’t hurting anyone. If anything, he was singing well enough that he was helping the group. Not so loud that he was overpowering, not so soft that his voice vanished.

Anthony smiled at him at one point, and Efnisien’s fingers were hurting, he was gripping the pages so hard.

They stopped for a break. Nate just looked at him for a long, measuring moment before heading off to the table with the homemade fruit juice that Trixie brought every time. Janusz walked over and joined Nate, after telling Efnisien that he was doing great.

Efnisien took one of the small plastic cups over to the water cooler. And then, annoyed, he made a note in his phone to remember to buy a satchel or some fucking thing that could carry _water_ so that he wasn’t constantly wondering where he was going to get it next.

When they started again, Efnisien couldn’t find the same zone as before. He was painfully conscious of his own voice, all the places he slipped, the places where he was slightly flat or sharp. He had the timing right, at least, there was someone in the sopranos who was always slightly off and he wasn’t willing to look over and see who it was, in case he started hating her the same way he used to hate on Mack. He just didn’t want to get in that cycle.

He found himself wishing Dr Gary could just open up his brain and carve out the worst parts.

His eyes ached as he imagined Dr Gary with an orbitoclast – going in through the eyes instead of the ears – to lobotomise him. He kept imagining the stupid smile on his face as he said:

‘Go for it, Doc.’

Dr Gary could erase his entire self and it would be great.

No one else would ever have to be scared of him, and he’d never have to be scared of himself.

By the time choir finished, he had no idea how well or poorly he’d done. No one was looking at him oddly. He rubbed at his eyes a few times, then had to yank his hand away when he felt the space between his eyeball and the skin where an orbitoclast would be inserted. It was just a fancy, ridged ice-pick, designed to do as much damage as possible. Dr Gary could use a neat little hammer and drive it through the thin bone into the frontal lobes, and then he’d have to swing it all around to cleave the lobes from the thalamus.

Something that would look simple on the surface, and be carnage inside.

When Walter Freeman used to perform the procedure, he sometimes used it so violently that the metal would snap off in the person’s head. It would have to be surgically retrieved, which probably didn’t matter much, because it wasn’t like anything would make the person who they used to be, ever again.

Efnisien blinked hard and shuddered and realised he’d completely spaced out. He was near the water cooler again and had no memory of getting there.

_A seven. An eight? No. A seven._

A seven.

Why? Why now? Hadn’t things been going well? It was insane to him that he used to think about things like this regularly, multiple times a day, and now it happened once and he felt like an anvil had fallen on his head.

‘Twink!’ Bridge shouted from across the room, with a group of people including Teddy and Anthony. ‘We’re going out for tapas or burgers something. I dunno. Wanna come?’

‘Uh,’ Efnisien stared at them all. ‘Thank you, but I have to walk home and it takes a little while. So I don’t- Probably not.’

‘What? No, I’ll drive you and get you home after. It can’t be that far if you’re walking. Come on, you look like you could do with about forty sliders.’

Efnisien didn’t know what a slider was. His body moved him away from the water cooler before he’d even decided whether to go or not. But when someone told him to do something, it was easier just to do it. And Bridge was okay.

Everyone else was kind of terrifying.

It wasn’t until they were outside in the carpark that Efnisien also realised Nate and Janusz were coming along as well. There were eight of them, not including Efnisien. Trixie, Anthony, and Teddy. Two other girls that Efnisien didn’t know by name, but looked like the kind of girls Efnisien would’ve once targeted, because Crielle raised him to go after the pretty ones.

_‘She looks like me, doesn’t she?’ Crielle said sweetly into his ear._

_‘What? No. I mean- You’re both blonde. That’s it.’_

_‘Don’t you think you want to hurt her because she looks like me? That would be fun, wouldn’t it?’_

_‘I don’t want to hurt you, Mama.’_

_‘But you do, my darling prince, you’ve told me all the ways you’d kill me.’_

_Efnisien was stuck, because yes, he had told her different ways that he’d kill her and hurt her, because she liked it, because she asked him to. Doing it at night when she sat at the foot of his bed with her legs curled up primly on his quilt after she’d talked about all the ways she’d kill him, felt far different to actually looking at some chick nearby and…and…_

_‘If you don’t want to hurt me, and we’re nothing alike, then you must_ really _want to hurt her, hm? You’re not shy are you? Look at her, she’s already making eyes at you. I bet the little bird thinks that you’re such a good boy. But the only person you’re good to is me, remember? You know that, my darling. And you’re so handsome tonight.’_

_Her hands on the collar of his white, tailored jacket. Her hands making him hard, confused, as manicured fingernails brushed – skimmed – against the skin of his neck as her blue eyes never blinked, never looked away from his._

_He’d read once that psychopaths didn’t blink when they were hunting. But he’d also read that psychopath was an outdated term and it didn’t really apply to anyone. Besides, he blinked all the time and he was a monster._

_His cock was hard. She was smoothing his hands down his jacket. He felt strange flashes of anger and fear and arousal and revulsion and he thought of the pretty girl nearby and looked over at her._

_It would be hot if he hunted while Crielle knew about it. To hunt someone she’d picked out for him. That would be hot. She’d like it._

_She’d like it._

_‘Are you aroused already, just thinking about it?’ she said, her voice light and rich, teasing and mercurial. ‘My, I suppose boys will be boys, won’t they? Do you want to make me proud, darling? Go on. Go on now.’_

He didn’t remember the girls’ name. He must have asked for it, but he didn’t remember it. He remembered exactly what he’d done, and Crielle demanding that he talk about it afterwards to the point that he embellished details that never happened, because what he did wasn’t enough, even though he knew it was fucking plenty. He’d seen that girl’s face. And Crielle still demanded more. He had goosebumps, he was cold, he absently scratched at one side of his chest, where one of Crielle’s hands had rested.

He was in a moving car, and Bridge was smoking as she drove, occasionally tapping the butt of the cigarette out of the window. He thought: _That’s illegal._

He thought if that was the worst thing Bridge had ever done, she was doing a damn sight better than he ever would. The night air was cold on his skin. The car smelled faintly of sweat and strong tobacco, but he didn’t mind it. When he turned and looked at the backseat, he saw a gym bag, and a zipped up tennis racket.

‘You’re a space cadet today,’ Bridge said. ‘You don’t talk much, do ya?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘Uh, I guess. I can sometimes.’

‘You said your therapist told you to join a group. You like- neurodivergent or something? You know, autistic or whatever?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘I dunno. No. I have Pure O.’

‘What’s that?’ Bridge said, glancing over at him.

He realised he was in a car with a strange woman that he’d only met twice, he didn’t even know her last name, and he suddenly felt sick. He placed both of his hands on his gut and stared out of the window. He didn’t even know where they were going.

‘Um, it’s like- It’s OCD, you know, a form of obsessive compulsive disorder. But instead of all the physical tics – the compulsions – that people get, it’s just the obsessive thoughts. It’s why- I guess it’s why I’m a space cadet sometimes.’

‘Got it,’ she said. ‘That makes you not join groups?’

He thought of Gwyn saying that he wasn’t supposed to join groups because Crielle thought he’d hurt people in a way she couldn’t protect him from.

Was that something Crielle said to Gwyn, while saying something else to him? Or was it something Gwyn had concluded from the fact that Efnisien avoided groups?

God, he had to see him tomorrow.

‘It’s like- Um, my thoughts get really violent, and I get scared I’m going to hurt people. And I don’t-’ _I don’t want to hurt people._ Was that really what he thought? Was it? Because he sure had no fucking problem doing it all his life. Three years versus the other seventeen, right? It was a blip on the fucking radar.

‘I don’t want to,’ he finished weakly.

‘Well, don’t you fuckin’ try anything with me, or I’ll deck you so hard you won’t remember your own name.’

‘Well, it’s not like you remember my name,’ Efnisien snarked without thinking.

He startled at his own response, and Bridge was already guffawing. She flicked the cigarette butt out of the window, and he suppressed a wince. God, his priorities were so fucked up. Of the two of them in the car, she wasn’t the one most likely to hurt someone else, he was. He was.

‘Efnisien, right?’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, as she parallel parked easily alongside a café and restaurant strip he was familiar with. Some of the nicer restaurants he’d visited with Crielle. He’d hunted along this street twice. Once unsuccessfully, only four years ago, because his heart wasn’t in it. And once successfully, when he’d been thirteen and looked – according to Crielle – too cherubic for anyone to realise what a demon he was.

The urge to tell Bridge everything pressed into his mouth. It was only remembering Dr Gary telling him not to talk about his past to these people that stopped him, but it felt like he was committing a crime. As they walked towards a burger place he’d never been to in his life, he felt like Dr Gary was really bad at his job actually. Like really bad. Like…

Didn’t know what the fuck he was doing.

They all met up around the same time. The two girls, Ally and Kelly, were married and had two kids, and Ally talked about animals in a way that made him realise she was a vet. Anthony and Teddy were talking about upcoming shows. Janusz was talking to Trixie about the best way to make muffins – something about olive oil versus butter or margarine – and Nate was playing some kind of game on his phone.

Everyone looked over the menus, and Efnisien knew he couldn’t eat most of this stuff. Anything too greasy would murder his guts, and he didn’t want to be sore and crampy tomorrow. Not with Gwyn and then a fucking session with Dr Gary.

He wanted to go home. But now he couldn’t get there if he walked.

Why did Dr Gary think he was ready for something like this?

_It’s so you don’t hurt Arden._

Efnisien pressed his lips together and as everyone else ordered late night meals with burgers and chips, Efnisien opted for a grilled chicken slider with lettuce, carrot and satay sauce. It was cheaper – though he wasn’t sure how they were all supposed to pay – and when the food arrived he just watched everyone eating for a while, talking so easily, before biting into the slider.

He was surprised at how good it was, especially since he suspected he couldn’t taste anything properly. He ate slowly, he paid attention to every random twitch and feeling his gut threw at him. He did not want to spend the rest of this outing sitting on a toilet while everyone thought he was a freak.

He was much happier listening, than talking. Conversation flowed easily, no one seemed mad at Efnisien for being quiet. Nate sometimes looked at him, and Bridge glanced at him like she was checking he was still there, but otherwise he was left mostly to himself.

Towards the end his phone buzzed, and he pulled it out and saw that it was close to eleven. He hadn’t realised how late it’d gotten.

Arden had sent him a picture of Isabelle covered in about forty different coloured bows made out of ribbon and the caption:

_Do you think I could sell these?_

Efnisien stared at the ridiculous photo.

‘That your boyfriend?’ Bridge said.

‘Huh?’ Efnisien startled, looking up.

‘You look all sweet on someone,’ she said.

He realised a couple of the others were looking at him, and he stared down at his phone and nodded.

‘Um. Yeah. My boyfriend.’

He could say that now, Arden had said it was okay. Arden had said Efnisien was his boyfriend, so he wasn’t breaking any rules.

_I like the bows,_ he sent back. _Is this you finding a new hobby? Are you okay?_

A pause, the little ellipsis that meant Arden was typing. Efnisien listened to everyone else speaking as he waited. Bridge was loudly saying it was definitely worth driving an hour out to a better hardware store, and Efnisien supposed some stereotypes had to start somewhere.

_I am living in Stressville,_ Arden wrote back. _But the bows are easy. Knot-making is like, my passion, bruh. I’ve spent two hours looking at expensive handmade ribbons on Etsy and trying to decide if I can justify spending five hundred dollars to start a new business. Five hundred dollars on ribbons. They’re so pretty. And now that I’ve written that out, I am going to go and have two espressos, calm the fuck down and take Isabelle for a run._

_You going to take the bows out first?_ Efnisien sent, with a small smiley face.

_Most of them. I’m going to leave a few. Hey, guess what, we get to see each other on Friday! It’s going to be so baller. Stay tuned for the next episode of ‘Arden receives repeated packages of extremely fancy ribbon and forgets why he bought it all.’_

_I’ll remind you,_ Efnisien sent.

Arden replied with a selfie of him and Isabelle. It was blurry, he was winking in that stupid way, and Isabelle’s head was swinging towards Arden’s face, her tongue already sticking out to lick him.

It made Efnisien smile as he put his phone away, and when he looked up, Bridge was quickly looking away from him, a smile still on her face. She began giving Anthony a hard time about one of their song choices and everyone friendlily argued for the next twenty minutes about it. Even Efnisien was drawn in at the prompting of Janusz, though Efnisien said he didn’t mind the song, but he was a tenor and it would be harder for the sopranos, so he couldn’t really judge.

At which point Nate rolled his eyes, and Ally and Kelly cheered and said it was a point to them because they were sopranos, which wasn’t true at all, because Efnisien still liked the song.

But he was trying not to look at Ally and Kelly in case his brain decided to go crazy about it, so he kept quiet after that.

At the end of the night, Bridge’s car idled outside of his apartment. They’d made some small talk about the music they sang on the drive home, but he could tell she was thoughtful or pensive about something. She was silent for long moments, and she looked at him gravely, in a way that made him feel like he’d done something bad without realising.

‘Um, thank you so much for like, driving,’ Efnisien said. ‘Seriously. And taking me there. I appreciate it. I’ll- I’ll see you at rehearsals?’

‘Hey, tell me something,’ Bridge said, her voice a bit lower than usual.

‘Uh, sure.’

‘You said you were scared of hurting people. So. Have you? Hurt people?’

Efnisien stared at his knees. He couldn’t lie. He couldn’t lie to a direct question, but he wanted to. He wanted to _so badly._ Her ex had smashed a vase into the side of her head. So she deserved the truth. She did.

‘Yes,’ he choked out.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Badly?’

‘Yeah.’ Would Dr Gary be mad at him? But it was a direct question. He couldn’t lie. He couldn’t even explain that it was different now because what if it wasn’t? Three years versus seventeen. Bridge had already been hurt by an asshole and she could probably just tell he was an asshole too from how weird and twitchy he was. Maybe he was more obviously a monster than he thought. Or maybe she was just smart and she’d figured it out.

‘Badly enough that it counts as a crime?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said, refusing to look at her. _I don’t do it anymore._

It didn’t matter. It would never matter.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Well. I’m not gonna tell anyone else in the group, that’s your shit to deal with. But I don’t think we should talk anymore. Okay?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Of course. I’m sorry. I understand, I- I get it.’

‘Sure hope you do, twink.’

He nodded, opened the car door, and got out of her car, closing the door behind him. She looked at him for a long time with a grim expression on her face, and then pulled away and left him there on the curb, the white noise in his head sounding like the rain, endless, grey and unrelenting.


	34. Misunderstood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While Gwyn doesn't know he's doing this, I'm adding a warning for gaslighting and ace-phobia in this chapter. Also: Mild description of upset stomach symptoms (diarrhea) because you know, it’s a miracle we haven’t had that yet.

The next morning, Efnisien sat at his desk and pretended to work when Gwyn knocked and let himself in. Efnisien was used to keeping the door unlocked for him, though that morning it had taken a stupid amount of energy to just stand up, walk to the door, click the lock, and walk back again. He stared blankly at his computer screen and waited. His stomach churned and churned. A couple of times he wondered if he had food poisoning, but he probably didn’t.

He’d felt like this enough to know it was almost never food poisoning.

He’d spent most of the night before so lost in intrusive thoughts – mainly of Berdella – that he’d only come out long enough to move from the couch to his bed. His brain didn’t show him as the serial killer, it didn’t show him as the criminal, he wasn’t the one committing the crimes.

Efnisien realised he kind of preferred it when he was, even if it did make him feel gross. Because there were no words for how he felt when his mind kept stabbing into his brain with images of what it’d be like if he was a victim.

When Gwyn entered, he was twitchier than usual. He placed a novel on the history of dragon folklore on the table instead of handing it to Efnisien directly. Efnisien looked at him, feeling as though he looked far more idle than he felt. Gwyn looked all around the apartment, like he was trying to find evidence of whatever crime Efnisien must have committed to make him want to not see Gwyn for two weeks.

Efnisien’s chest was cold, his gut tumbled, he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and the grey jumper because he didn’t want to see Gwyn’s reaction to the pale blue one. He wore socks and sneakers because his feet were cold. His knuckles ached.

Gwyn looked at the bookshelf, the table, then back to the bookshelf.

‘Where’s the book I got you?’ he said sharply.

Efnisien stared down at the table. He could lie and say it was in his room, but he was tired of lying. He waited for the part of him that would say something angry or snarky, but that part of him seemed to have died.

‘Um,’ he said, tabbing idly across Firefox as he stared at all the anthropology research he’d been doing. ‘Actually, it was kind of too dense for me to manage, and um, I did try reading it but couldn’t. So I passed it onto my friend. My boyfriend. Because he said he’d take it.’

_‘Boyfriend?’_

Efnisien’s eyes dragged to Gwyn’s face, and he wished, he just wished that Gwyn would hit him. Because that would be easier. Having been beaten recently, and in Hillview, and having to deal with this now, he was pretty sure he knew which one he preferred.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said.

‘I don’t think that’s- Does Dr Gary know?’

‘Yeah.’

‘A _boyfriend,’_ Gwyn said.

‘I mean I was gay for you most of my fucking life, so why is it such a surprise?’ Efnisien said, his voice empty.

Gwyn’s expression shifted so many times, and Efnisien couldn’t properly figure out most of what he was seeing, he knew at least one of them was rage and another was indignation, and the rest were probably varying degrees of confused. He could almost imagine Gwyn trying to work out a diplomatic way of asking if Efnisien was just straight up raping a guy and calling it a relationship.

Efnisien pushed his laptop back and wished Gwyn would talk about his own life.

‘You mostly attacked women,’ Gwyn said.

‘Yep.’

Efnisien didn’t think it was a good indicator of what his sexuality was, but Gwyn obviously didn’t feel the same way. Efnisien attacked puppies too, but he wasn’t out there looking to date fucking Isabelle. He remembered he and Dr Gary talking about attraction patterns years before – who Efnisien attacked wasn’t necessarily who he wanted to be with. Sometimes it could be the opposite.

Because attacking people was about power, not fucking dating.

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be with- I’m trying to work out- How does it even _work?_ Did you just find a masochist who would put up with…? I understand you’ve made a lot of progress, I know that, but I don’t think-’

‘I’m trying something out.’

‘A relationship isn’t something you _try out,’_ Gwyn ground out.

‘Yeah. Okay. If you want to call Dr Gary and talk to him about it, you still have his number and his email address. You can go to town on that, if you want.’

‘It’s not like he’s sitting in with the two of you to see what it’s actually like in reality. You could be lying to him.’

‘Jesus,’ Efnisien said, without even realising the word was coming out. His stomach felt like it had rocks inside of it, grinding all over each other, from his sternum all the way down to his pelvis. His body broke out in the kind of cold sweat that preceded needing to bolt to the bathroom. He held on, ignoring the resulting cramps that began to slowly build. Maybe he could get through Gwyn’s visit without what he knew was coming.

_Please,_ he begged himself, silently.

‘I read an article the other day that said that abusers are often good at using therapy to get better at abusing people,’ Gwyn said.

Efnisien couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He supposed he’d brought this on himself, because he’d gotten so bitchy and mean last time about Augus. And well, all the other times. Gwyn didn’t trust him, certainly had no reason to trust him, and Efnisien didn’t want to talk about what his life looked like now, because Gwyn’s big hands were like Lludd’s and it wouldn’t be hard for him to crush everything to pieces.

‘Though I don’t think Dr Gary is easy to take advantage of,’ Gwyn finally said, looking at Efnisien like a laser. He did that unblinking thing too sometimes. And he definitely wasn’t a psychopath. It was obviously just how the family was, at times.

‘You don’t have to believe me,’ Efnisien said, ‘but I don’t really want to hurt people, so while I can see how someone could manipulate a therapist into…doing whatever that article talked about, I’m pretty much seeing Dr Gary to make sure I’m not so much of an asshole. It’s _obviously_ a work in progress. But like… Anyway. I suppose you’re not sitting in our sessions so I could be lying to you as well.’

‘You said something about being in a choir?’

God, Efnisien did not want to talk about that. He didn’t even know if he could go back. Bridge hadn’t told him to leave, but if he made her uncomfortable, or feel unsafe, surely he shouldn’t go? That was her people and her community. It was obvious she was good friends with so many of the people there.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien rasped. ‘A choir.’

The last cramp had faded, and a new one built. He knew from the pressure building all the way up in his throat, that he had to- God, he’d managed to avoid this ever happening around Gwyn. It was so much easier to just not eat and then he wouldn’t have to deal with this. Nothing to shit out of his system if there was nothing there. Usually.

‘I gotta- Excuse me- Bad stomach.’

He bolted.

As he sat on the toilet and ground his teeth together from the rolling waves of cramping, griping agony, he was vaguely aware that this was probably going to last a while. Sometimes – rarely – it was fast. But sometimes it was just wave after wave of cramps and spasms and he had to wait until everything ended. His lower back broke out into a cold sweat, clammy and gross like the rest of him, and he shoved his cold, shaking fingertips into his sleeves and squeezed his eyes shut because it hurt too much to look at his phone like he sometimes did.

The cramps themselves wrapped around his entire torso. Even when nothing was happening, the pain built until he could hear his breaths hissing in a measured way between his clenched teeth, because otherwise he would whine or make a sound. Sometimes he bit his wrist so hard he could see the wet, messy teeth imprints afterwards during the worst of the wracking pain. But he didn’t want Gwyn to know, and he was paranoid Gwyn could hear him. He was behind two doors – his bedroom door, the bathroom door – but the place wasn’t exactly soundproof.

It lasted far too long. Long enough that his left foot began to go numb. Long enough he began to wonder if he was bleeding even though he rarely was when he checked. It seemed impossible that something could hurt so much without him bleeding. Long enough that he knew he’d gotten rid of the last of the food in his system and was excreting bile acid, which burned his flesh and would hurt him for days after.

Long enough that he curled into himself and tried to think of nothing at all, trembling through it and waiting.

During episodes, even during breaks between cramps when it seemed like it would be over, he knew it wasn’t. He just knew something in his body wouldn’t be done yet, and he had to wait for that strange feeling that let him know it was over. 

His hands were trembling when he was done. He felt fragile, as he always did after the longest and the worst episodes. His abdomen ached like he’d taken multiple punches, and he rubbed carefully at his belly after washing his hands. He wouldn’t ever touch the skin beneath the jumper, but he still needed to rub, even though it made no difference.

He came out and felt horribly embarrassed by all of it. Probably Gwyn thought he was faking or something. And when he came out, Gwyn was sitting at Efnisien’s usual seat, looking at his laptop and Efnisien thought he had no right to feel like that wasn’t okay.

He had no right to feel anything around Gwyn, except bad because he’d done bad things.

Gwyn’s eyes widened when he saw him, but he didn’t say anything. Efnisien went straight to the sink and ran the tap, occasionally dipping his shaking fingers beneath it until the water turned warm. He let the water run as hot as he could before filling the glass, and then he sipped slow, tiny mouthfuls as he assessed his body with the paranoid awareness of knowing that just because he was done for now, didn’t mean he was _done._

He hoped he was. He wouldn’t eat before seeing Dr Gary, and that would probably help everything just…stop.

‘Is it often like that since she stabbed you?’ Gwyn said.

‘Sometimes,’ Efnisien said.

‘I didn’t realise.’

‘It’s not that bad.’

‘Is it because…? Is there anything they can do?’

Efnisien shrugged. Then shook his head. ‘I mean, I haven’t been back to see the gastroenterologist in a while. But they weren’t surprised at the time when I told them. It just happens. Some stuff just won’t go back to the way it was.’

That was true about a lot of things. That was true about thinking Gwyn was his cousin, and that they were family, and that it meant something. God, he was so fucking stupid.

Efnisien wanted to tell Gwyn he didn’t need to keep coming, but the words wouldn’t come. He hated that he’d even thought them. He still loved Gwyn, and he still… he still needed Gwyn to visit. Just maybe not all the time, maybe not as often. Or maybe until Efnisien didn’t feel like he was going to lose every good thing in his life.

Like he’d just lost Bridge, and probably the choir.

But surely it would be better for Gwyn to forget about him? To stop being concerned that Efnisien was out there being some kind of unchecked criminal?

Efnisien leaned heavily against the counter and kept sipping at the water, holding it with both hands and not wanting to talk. He was exhausted.

‘You’re studying anthropology,’ Gwyn said.

‘It’s part of my work. The audio transcription.’

‘Oh. It looks interesting. Do you like it?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, feeling guilty. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to like it. Maybe he was supposed to be doing surveillance. He remembered Dr Gary telling him that people like him had poorer outcomes and were more likely to revert to their previous criminal acts if they were condemned and miserable. Efnisien thought it was stupid that he was supposed to somehow feel happier, after everything he’d done.

‘Look,’ Efnisien said eventually, ‘I don’t know if it helps – it probably doesn’t – but with…with the guy. Um. I’m like- I’ve seen this like diverse gender and sexuality specialist – it was Dr Gary’s idea – and we kind of both realised I’m asexual. So whatever you’re imagining, you don’t need to bother. I mean I get that I can’t- I get that you probably will anyway. But just- I don’t know. Maybe that helps. I don’t know.’

‘You’re not asexual,’ Gwyn said, so firmly it was like Efnisien almost thought he had no choice but to believe him. _Oh, of course I’m not asexual._

‘What?’ Efnisien said, confused.

‘After everything you’ve- You can’t be-’

It was tempting to say: _Well, how the fuck would I have known what sexuality I was?_ But he didn’t. It wasn’t Gwyn’s problem. None of it was Gwyn’s problem. But he wondered sometimes how much Gwyn thought he’d done to other people, other girls. Probably, he thought Efnisien was a rapist. It was certainly what Crielle wanted him to be, how she talked about him, and it was what Efnisien wanted them all to believe.

And it was definitely what all those girls thought about him. He didn’t see much of a line between what he’d done and rape anyway. But apparently it might matter _now,_ when he found himself unexpectedly feeling like maybe he wasn’t allowed to be asexual.

Efnisien almost changed the subject by asking about Augus, then remembered that Gwyn said he wouldn’t come back, ever again, if Efnisien brought up Augus. He knew Gwyn probably meant Efnisien shouldn’t talk about Augus in a shitty way, but he didn’t want to test that theory. And he didn’t want to know about Gwyn’s work, or his friends, or his house, or his dog.

Which was bad. He needed to do better. He needed to care more.

‘I don’t understand you,’ Gwyn said. ‘Why a choir? Do you even like singing? Is it religious?’

‘It’s queer. And I don’t mind singing. I have a few…other back up groups, in case this one doesn’t work out.’

It was hard to remember that the choir had been one of the worst groups he could imagine tolerating, and that it had been his original trial run so that if he fucked it up, he would have a better, more interesting group to join.

He didn’t want to leave the choir.

But if Bridge wanted him to leave, he’d leave.

But Bridge hadn’t told him to leave. She hadn’t even told him that she was going to tell the others. But shouldn’t she? Especially if she was so worried? No, but it wasn’t her job to warn the others, it was his job.

Dr Gary had been wrong all along. Efnisien should have told everyone what he was from the beginning, and because he didn’t, everything had gone badly.

‘You used to play piano,’ Gwyn said slowly, like he was just remembering. ‘You used to be pretty good. Didn’t you used to play for Crielle?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I didn’t know you were musical outside of that.’

‘I’m not,’ Efnisien said. ‘They take anyone. You don’t have to audition or be good or anything.’

_But I’m not that bad. I’m not terrible at it._

It didn’t matter.

He felt so tired. Standing was hurting his stomach muscles, and he could feel them starting to shake from fatigue. They’d been cramping so much, for so long, he didn’t think they were up to much more. Slowly he made his way over to the couch and sank down, still holding his glass of water – rapidly losing its heat – and thought he didn’t really want to see Dr Gary.

He didn’t want Dr Gary to give him hope, or help him find it, when that was exhausting too.

‘I remember you used to practice a lot,’ Gwyn said suddenly, like it was just coming to him. ‘The piano. Sometimes really late at night.’

‘Lludd hated it.’

Efnisien’s skin crawled and he frowned. He didn’t know why he felt so weird about Lludd lately. Lludd was Gwyn’s monster, not his.

‘Knowing him, he probably thought music was for the weak or something,’ Gwyn muttered.

‘Yeah, right?’ Efnisien said, his lips quirking a little, even as he wondered how Gwyn could make conversation like this with someone he thought was a rapist. Gwyn literally thought he was raping Arden, and that Arden was into it. Efnisien didn’t even want to think about it, but his brain was helpfully supplying images of him tormenting Arden, and Arden’s distressed face, and he wanted to crawl into a blender and turn it on.

‘Lludd hated the humanities so much,’ Gwyn said.

‘It’s why he never came to the opera. It was girly shit.’

‘I should go,’ Gwyn said, standing. ‘I’m going to call Dr Gary though. About everything. I want to believe that things are going well, I do, I just want to- I just want to make sure.’

Efnisien knew Gwyn didn’t believe a word he said, unless he said that he’d done something bad, so he just nodded. He felt like he’d felt the night before, standing on the curb while Bridge drove away, something empty and gnawing inside of him.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, because Gwyn seemed to be waiting for him to speak. ‘Well. I have a session with him later. So you can either call before or like, after or whatever, if you want to make sure I’m still going.’

‘Okay.’

Gwyn walked towards the door, and Efnisien couldn’t help himself. The words burst out of him as Gwyn’s hand rested on the handle.

‘It’s been three years, you know,’ he said suddenly.

‘What?’ Gwyn said.

‘It’s been three years since I’ve hurt anyone. Except those times I ragged on you. Except those. And except ragging on that guy, as well. The guy who- Um. Anyway.’ _He doesn’t know about that, dipshit._ ‘But outside of that, it’s been three years.’

Three versus seventeen.

It was nothing. It meant _nothing._

Gwyn paused, his hand falling away from the door handle. He looked at Efnisien for a long time, and then something crossed his face and Efnisien knew it was pity. Arden had never looked at him like that. But Dr Gary had a couple of times.

‘You’re not…going to hurt yourself, are you?’ Gwyn said finally.

‘Nah,’ Efnisien said, and then smiled at his glass. ‘Too tired.’

‘Ah. Well… So I’ll see you in a month?’

‘Yep.’ _It’s not like I have any choice in the matter._

Gwyn left, and Efnisien sagged sideways onto the couch, placing the glass on the floor as he went. He curled into himself and his face screwed up. For a long time he thought he’d cry, but nothing happened. After a while, his breathing slowed.

He wanted Arden. But all Efnisien could see was what it would look like if he hurt him, or if Arden did what Bridge did, and decided to call it quits. And he’d be right to. That would be his _right._ Efnisien didn’t think he’d be able to fall asleep imagining any of those things, but he did anyway, his sleep uneasy and fraught.


	35. Drama Triangle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is an absolute unit, just a complete chonky boy. Enjoy!

‘You look tired,’ Dr Gary said sympathetically, as Efnisien sagged down into the chair, feeling like it would probably take a few days for him to properly recover from how bad his stomach episode had been.

Efnisien shrugged in response.

The session wasn’t off to a great start. When he saw Mack, he opened his mouth to say hi, then thought that actually, he was an asshole predator and maybe she didn’t want to talk to him at all and she only responded to him because he started talking to her. Maybe she didn’t want to keep talking to sex offenders. So then he just smiled really fucking awkwardly, and she smiled back, and he sat down and felt like a giant fucking pollutant sitting in the same space as her.

He understood that Dr Gary had protective things in place for her, but like, how was he supposed to know if Mack actually wanted to talk to him? Maybe she didn’t. It’s not like he asked her. He just asked Dr Gary for her name one day. But if he asked her if she wanted to talk to him, why would she want to be honest with him anyway? Sure, she could _not_ talk to him, but she didn’t know if he was a current threat or not, she didn’t know how he’d react, she probably thought it was safer to respond friendlily, like she cared.

But she’d heard him throw tantrums and furniture and break glasses in Dr Gary’s office on and off for two years. And all that time he’d left by walking straight out without saying a word and barely making eye contact.

So for five minutes he sat there, panicking about what the right fucking call was. He still hadn’t figured it out by the time he sat in Dr Gary’s office and the door closed Mack out and somehow created the bubble that was just him and Dr Gary, in that office.

Efnisien didn’t want to say anything. He wiggled a bit deeper into the chair and stared at the plant with its dusty leaves and thought it wouldn’t be hard to get a cloth or a tissue, dampen it with some water, and run it over the leaves. But like, it wasn’t like the room got much sunlight, so surely the dust wasn’t interfering with photosynthesis. Or was it? Efnisien didn’t know.

There was a glass of water already on the table for him. Efnisien knew it would be cold water, and he knew even water made his stomach be a bastard on a bad day.

He wasn’t aware of time passing, until Dr Gary shifted in his seat.

‘You’re quiet today,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I wanted to let you know that Gwyn called me earlier today. For the sake of transparency, he asked me if you were attending sessions regularly, and if I knew that you had a boyfriend, and if I had asked you to join a group. I take it he visited?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said.

‘It didn’t go well?’

‘It went fine,’ Efnisien said.

Dr Gary had a dubious look on his face. Efnisien didn’t really want to argue about it. He didn’t want to talk about _anything._ He could just not go to choir ever again, he’d already paid up about a quarter of the year and they wouldn’t miss him. He didn’t know what he’d do about Arden but…he’d figure it out. And Gwyn would keep coming like normal, no matter what Efnisien said or did.

‘Do you want to talk to me about the visit?’ Dr Gary said.

‘No.’

‘All right. What would you like to talk to me about?’

‘Nothing,’ Efnisien said, then pressed his lips together and stared at the plant. ‘I think what you do is bullshit, and I think you’re bad for me.’

Dr Gary was quiet and still, and Efnisien didn’t know if that meant he was excited or disapproving or what. He didn’t want to know, so he didn’t look up.

‘Will you tell me why you feel that way?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Shouldn’t the plant have cleaner leaves?’ Efnisien said abruptly. ‘It’s _dusty._ Don’t you have a cleaner or someone who cleans it? Why’s it like that? It just gets dustier.’

Dr Gary turned and looked at the plant, then looked back at Efnisien, his eyes narrowing a little.

‘Do you remember what you did to the plant the first time you saw it?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. He’d gone over to it, ripped out one of the large leaves and torn it into pieces. The smell of the sap had been thick in the room, green and kind of gross, and the sap was sticky on his fingers, but the leaf had felt thick and fleshy and satisfying to tear.

‘How do you think you’d feel if someone cleaned the leaves now?’

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said. ‘Like someone was caring for it. It’s alive. I know it doesn’t have like, a nervous system or whatever, but it’s alive, right? Feels like you should just have a fake fucking plastic plant if you’re not going to care for a real one.’

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said. ‘May I make a note?’

‘Fuck you and fuck your notes,’ Efnisien muttered, with no real feeling, and he thought Dr Gary would make a note anyway, but he didn’t. Instead he sat back in his chair and contemplated Efnisien, which was annoying.

‘May I make an observation about Gwyn’s call to me?’ Dr Gary said finally.

‘Knock yourself out, Doc.’

‘While I appreciate that he worries about what you might potentially do, based on what you have done in the past, he has a significantly flawed perspective on who you are as a person. That’s also understandable, considering your relationship to one another and your history. But given how he talks about you now, it becomes clear that he is talking about a version of you that he remembers from four or five years ago, and not who you are now.’

‘Cool observation,’ Efnisien said, giving Dr Gary a thumbs up. ‘You can take that one to the bank, Doc.’

‘Do you think-’

‘I tried to push it back,’ Efnisien said. ‘I tried to push back seeing him by two weeks, and he refused. He acted like- He acted like I was worse than ever, like I’d definitely just _raped_ someone, because I didn’t want to see him for a fucking fortnight.’

‘I see. You tried to set a boundary with him, and he ignored you.’

_‘No,’_ Efnisien said. ‘I didn’t. And he wasn’t wrong to react the way he did. Right? It was fine.’

‘With all due respect, from your tone, your appearance and your behaviour, you don’t sound like it’s fine at all.’

Efnisien felt something flash inside of him, dark and hot, and he got up and walked to the door without a word. And then he hesitated, and he felt pathetic and weak, because why couldn’t he just walk the fuck out? He used to do it all the time.

After a minute of him just standing there and Dr Gary sitting in the chair, Dr Gary cleared his throat.

‘If you feel walking out right now will help you, then you are always welcome to do it. That is a form of boundary setting that sends a clear message, and while I don’t like it over you simply talking to me, it is always your right to walk out. However, it’s increasingly obvious that you’re unhappy, that you feel I have a role in that, and if nothing else, I would be grateful if you could tell me why you think I’m bad for you.’

‘I’m not unhappy,’ Efnisien said.

‘You’re certainly combative. And you tend to become combative when you’re unhappy or distressed.’

Efnisien ground his teeth together. His hands clenched into fists. And then, too tired to sustain the wave of anger, he walked back to the seat and dropped into it.

‘Why don’t you start from the beginning?’ Dr Gary suggested gently. ‘Do you want to start with the fact that you have a boyfriend?’

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said in a small voice, realising with a small burst of warmth that Dr Gary didn’t know, which was weird, because for Efnisien it somehow felt like it’d been that way for ages, even though hardly any time had passed at all.

He talked about the form, and his negotiations with Arden, and glossed over the part where he decided he didn’t want to be kissed on the mouth because he knew Dr Gary would leap on that like a fucking hyena. He talked about having a boyfriend. And then he talked about choir, and everything that happened with Bridge, and Dr Gary sighed before Efnisien even got to Gwyn’s visit.

‘Should I just never go to that choir again?’ Efnisien said. ‘That’s what I should do, right?’

‘I’m very sorry you had this experience,’ Dr Gary said, ‘though it’s not an unusual one to have. I know it feels awful, but we have different ways that we can look at this. For a start, from what you’ve described, your response was accepting and graceful, and you didn’t pressure her to change her mind, which I think was the best response given the circumstances. That’s something that many people – people without your history – aren’t capable of immediately following a rejection like that, and it’s impressive, Efnisien. It might not seem significant, but choosing to honour her choice, instead of pushing your feelings forward, was wise.’

‘I didn’t want to hurt her more. Because of what she’s been through.’

‘Which is great,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I don’t think you should stop attending choir.’

_‘What?’_ Efnisien said, staring at him. ‘Also all of _this_ is why I think you’re bullshit, by the way. All of this. I should have been honest with her from the beginning! With all of them!’

‘Actually, I think the fact that they’ve had a chance to get to know you as you are now, gives you a chance to continue this experience – even though I accept it won’t be easy, and that it might be too difficult for you at this point in time. Also, Efnisien, I know you were rejected, but her response was…measured, grounded and nonviolent. She brought it up at a point where you could leave immediately and safely. She didn’t strand you, for example. That might seem minor or insignificant, but I don’t think it is. The fact that she’s offering you the _choice_ to disclose to the others suggests that she is – at the very least – aware that the others might not be in immediate danger, even if she no longer feels safe because of her personal history.’

‘Or maybe she’s _testing_ me to see if I’ll do the right thing, and if I don’t, she’ll know I’m fucking _evil.’_

Dr Gary blinked at him, and Efnisien realised that normally he did a better job of not…sounding so batshit fucking crazy.

‘I think it would help to consider returning to the choir,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I don’t think you should pressure or coerce her into speaking to you, which likely rules out the pre and post-socialising you’ve been enjoying up until now. This is a difficult situation, it certainly is an emotional blow and there’s no getting around that, but Bridge has given you more of an opportunity here than you think. Perhaps she’ll change her mind and ask you to leave, in which case we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. But I don’t think her _not_ telling you to leave is a sign that she desperately wants you to never return. She seems – from what you’ve described – quite transparent, even blunt.’

‘Yeah, I guess,’ Efnisien said. He realised that if anyone would tell him to piss off, it would probably be Bridge. The idea of returning to the choir sounded fucking miserable. ‘The others will realise Bridge isn’t talking to me anymore. Everyone will hate me.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I don’t want to wait around for everyone to hate me!’

Dr Gary tilted his head and looked off into the distance, and Efnisien waited for him to sort out his thoughts so he could say something else that was stupid.

‘Socialising is challenging for many people. Your history makes it more challenging than most. The reason I don’t think it’s beneficial for you to immediately share your history, is because you are not that person anymore. They’re not meeting you five years ago, they’re meeting you now, and if you shove the version of you from five years ago in front of them, they’ll never be able to see you clearly as you are now. I know you think of it as lying, but I genuinely think of it as giving yourself a chance.’

‘It’s just delaying the inevitable.’

‘It was a combination of bad timing and Bridge’s ability to intuit based on the limited information available to her. Efnisien, you might think the friendship and the group are over, but life is complicated, and so are people. It’s true, she may never be able to accept you, but nor did she wholly reject you from her social group. At the least – and I am speculating here – it sounds like she recognises it’s possible that you might need or benefit from the group _and_ that she doesn’t want to interact with you, because she feels unsafe.’

Efnisien stared down at his knees. He didn’t want her to feel unsafe.

‘So I should just not go,’ he said.

‘That’s not what I-’

‘I don’t want her to feel that way.’

‘That’s a compassionate response to have. I still believe you should wait until she asks you to leave, rather than attempting to be a mind-reader. There’s different levels to feeling unsafe. She may feel unsafe being friendly to you, but she might be fine singing in a choir with you surrounded by people she trusts. You’ve never attacked her or hurt her, she is not your victim, and while you can work within the boundaries she sets down, if you pre-emptively respond to every imagined boundary from here until the future, you won’t be able to interact with anyone at all.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘That’s it! That’s the way it should be.’

‘Ah,’ Dr Gary said.

‘If I just don’t do this fucking idiotic shit, then I won’t get h-’

Oh boy, he did not want to finish that sentence _at all._

‘Could you finish that sentence, please?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Nope.’

‘You see,’ Dr Gary continued blandly, ‘when a person is avoidant – as you can be – sometimes it’s easy to dress up an action designed to prevent you from feeling hurt and terrible, as a virtuous action designed to save others from who you believe yourself to be. Someone in your situation might genuinely feel that if they simply don’t see anyone at all, ever, and refuse to participate in the world, they are helping everyone else. Ultimately, those sorts of philosophies tend to hide a desperation to avoid being wounded.’

‘I hate you.’

‘I know,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Efnisien, Bridge wounded you. She rejected you. Of course it hurts.’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘And even if it did, I _deserve_ it.’

‘It’s all right to both understand why she made the decision she made, feel like you deserve it, _and_ feel betrayed by her. There’s plenty of room for this dissonance to exist.’

‘No!’

‘And because you were wounded, it’s normal to want to recoil from what – or who – hurt you. While I appreciate that you’re framing it as wanting to help her, instead of wanting to get revenge or hurt her, it’s still a form of avoidance.’

‘Stop,’ Efnisien whispered.

Dr Gary said nothing, and Efnisien sat there feeling small and weak and stupid and pathetic. Like even him wanting to not hurt the people around him was still, ultimately, a deeply selfish act. It was just him trying to avoid being hurt. Which he deserved anyway.

‘You just want me to keep getting hurt,’ Efnisien said.

‘I don’t want that,’ Dr Gary said firmly. ‘I have never wanted that.’

‘You’re like Dr Henton.’

Dr Gary’s eyes widened, and Efnisien looked away, because now that he’d said it, he couldn’t get it out of his head, and he didn’t want to think about Dr Henton. He didn’t. But the last two days had been so fucking shitty maybe the thoughts were kind of hanging around anyway.

‘You’re playing a longer game,’ Efnisien rasped out. ‘But you’re just like him.’

A long silence, and then Dr Gary reached for the glass of water near his chair and took a drink from it, then set it down again.

‘It must be terrible,’ he said finally, ‘to feel like all I want is for you to keep getting hurt.’

‘No, that’s not- That’s not- I just…’

‘Is there anything I can do that would help you to feel this less?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘There’s nothing. Because you want me to keep going out and getting fucked up and fucked over. You wanted me to keep seeing Arden, and then I got fucking jumped on the way home. And you wanted me to keep going to choir and then Bridge told me to fuck off and that she didn’t want to talk to me anymore. And you wanted me to stay at Hillview and you sent me to _Henton_ in the first place.’

‘It’s true,’ Dr Gary said steadily, without flinching. ‘I did – exercising my best judgement at the time – send you to Dr Henton. I have encouraged you to join a group. And I have encouraged you to keep seeing Arden. May I ask you a question?’

‘I hate you,’ Efnisien said.

Dr Gary was silent until Efnisien nodded that he could ask his stupid question.

‘With the exception of joining a group – where I did foresee that you may have some difficulties socialising and wanted you to learn skills to negotiate those difficulties going into the future – I’d like to know if you believe that I arranged or organised for you to be beaten after leaving Arden’s bookshop, or if you believe I sent you to an abusive therapist on purpose.’

‘I know you didn’t get that guy to jump me,’ Efnisien said, his voice cracking.

He didn’t say anything else. He felt dreadful, and apprehensive, like Dr Gary would tell him to get out and never come back.

It wasn’t…

It wasn’t Dr Gary’s fault really.

Efnisien didn’t know if he was actually ready to talk about this. It was complicated. But sometimes he really did think that Dr Gary sent him to Henton, so that Henton could correctively shape Efnisien into a better version of himself.

‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ Efnisien said quickly. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m just stupid. I’m being stupid.’

‘I don’t think any of this is stupid at all,’ Dr Gary said seriously. ‘You’ve experienced two betrayals in twenty four hours – your cousin’s, and a friend’s. It’s normal in those circumstances, to sometimes recall other betrayals. Efnisien, I don’t know if this is relevant, but you’re not going to hurt me by talking about this. Not because it isn’t important to me, or because I don’t deeply regret Henton’s actions, or my role in leaving you in his poor care, but because this is something that is important for you to talk about when you’re ready. It’s allowed, expected, and a subject I would welcome. It doesn’t have to be today. Perhaps you’re testing the waters. But when you’re ready to talk about that series of events and how wounded you were, I’m ready to listen. It may be hard to believe, but I want to help you, I don’t want to hurt you. I’m not going to leave.’

_I’m not going to leave._

The words made something hard clench in his chest, painful and bright, and he shifted uncomfortably and stared at the shadows beneath Dr Gary’s desk.

‘I don’t want to talk about it today,’ Efnisien whispered. ‘I’m sorry I said it. It’s a mean thing to say.’

‘You haven’t hurt my feelings,’ Dr Gary said calmly. ‘Thank you for your apology. Do you want to talk about something else?’

‘Do you think I should’ve lied to her? To Bridge? When she asked me if I’d hurt people? I thought about what you said, but I couldn’t do it. It felt different to just…not saying anything in the first place.’

‘You’re right,’ Dr Gary said, accepting the change of subject so easily that Efnisien could have cried. ‘It was different. That was a direct and point blank question from someone you like. While I wish it hadn’t happened so soon into your experience with the choir, I don’t think you were wrong to answer the way you did. You were honest, and did your best in what was a difficult situation for the both of you.’

He didn’t expect to feel relieved, especially not with the looming shadow of Bridge’s general rejection hanging over him and making him feel like shit anyway. He wanted her to like him, because he liked her, but life didn’t work that way. He knew it didn’t.

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said finally.

‘Will you try going back?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Thank you,’ Dr Gary said, sounding like he meant it. ‘Do you want to talk about Gwyn’s visit today?’

‘Fucking hell,’ Efnisien said. He felt a bit more awake now, but that just made him even more aware of what a mess it had all been.

But he talked about it all the same, not missing out anything this time, including his stomach being an absolute shit. Dr Gary only asked questions where he wanted more details, or elaborations on an exchange, but he could tell from Dr Gary’s expression that he wasn’t happy with any of it.

At the end, when Efnisien wound down, Dr Gary leaned forwards in his chair.

‘I feel today is a good day to talk about how Gwyn mistreats you.’

‘What?’

‘Efnisien, he gaslighted you for a start.’

‘Huh?’

‘When you told him you were asexual, he directly contradicted you and told you that you weren’t. Any time someone tells you that you’re feeling or thinking something that you didn’t, or that you said something that you didn’t, they’re gaslighting you.’

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said, feeling like that wasn’t such a big deal actually and relaxing again. ‘So? Crielle did that all the time.’

Dr Gary gave him a _look,_ and Efnisien shrugged, because why did that matter? There were lots of times when Efnisien didn’t really know what he was feeling or thinking, and it was good when he was growing up to have Crielle tell him what was really going on, a lot of the time. She understood him way better than he understood himself.

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said, looking like he wanted to pinch the bridge of his nose with his hand before he thought the better of it. ‘Let’s look at this from another angle. How did you feel about your asexuality, after Gwyn told you that you weren’t asexual?’

‘Like I might not be asexual after all,’ Efnisien said, confused as to why Dr Gary seemed to think this was so important. ‘Which like, is true! I don’t fucking know. It’s really new, and I might not be.’

‘Did you feel like that before Gwyn told you that you weren’t asexual?’

‘I know you want me to say like, no, but that’s not- I just felt like it didn’t matter if I was or not.’

‘Can you explain that to me?’ Dr Gary said.

‘I mean, I felt like- The only person who really know outside of like Gwyn and you therapists, are Bridge and Arden. And Bridge had no problems with it, and Arden seems like, I don’t know, he really seems like the kind of person who just doesn’t care? Not in a bad way, just like, I really think if I told him that I wanted to try being like- doing- doing sex things for a while, he’d be fine with it, and then if I told him that I wanted to go back to like not doing those things, he’d be fine with that too. He’s like, I guess he seems really accepting of that kind of stuff.’

‘Right,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I’m going to let you sit with the word ‘accepting’ for a while and come to your own conclusion about the difference between Arden and Gwyn’s behaviour.’

‘No, but-! It’s not like Gwyn has any reason to _believe_ me! He doesn’t know any different! All he knows is the past! I don’t tell him shit, like, ever.’

‘But you did,’ Dr Gary said, looking puzzled. ‘You did today. You told him you were asexual. You literally gave him an opportunity today to get to know who you are now, and his response was to try and force you – against your consent – into a different shape that’s familiar and comfortable for him, but not healthy for you.’

‘No, it’s not like that. Why should he trust me? He shouldn’t!’

‘Efnisien, he has told you many times now – he’s even told _me_ – that he visits you to aid in your recovery. Either he believes in your recovery after three years, or he doesn’t. If he believes in your recovery, then part of that belief would involve accepting that you can change as a person and encouraging that change as it comes up. If he doesn’t, then he can treat you like the person you used to be and feel no guilt over it. I suspect he has some issues of his own that aren’t yours to fix or heal, Efnisien. You’re not his responsibility, and he’s not yours, either. You were his abuser, so we cannot expect that you will ever convince him that you are anything more, sadly. But nor should you simply put up with him coming in and undermining your recovery. I’m extremely concerned that after a visit where you were more transparent with him than ever before, his first response was to call me with an interrogatory and doubtful tone regarding everything about this process, including our work together.’

‘I mean I was bad to him last time. You know that.’

‘Efnisien, we’ve talked about this. One abusive deed doesn’t earn another. If that was the way the world worked, we’d all be abusive. He had _many_ choices at his disposal. He could have called me the day you were _aggressive_ to him, and talked about his concerns then. He could have chosen to recognise you were making an effort to behave differently today – which he might have started to do towards the end, but not until he’d treated you badly, repeatedly. He could have recognised his inability to see your progress and left early, saving you both some misery. He could have chosen not to see you and talked to his therapist about how you’re not his responsibility – because you’re _not,_ Efnisien, and it’s frankly dangerous for the both of you that he still embraces that after three years.

‘We can talk about saviour complexes if you like, but ultimately I have a lot of concerns that he – as your abuse victim – believes it’s a genuinely self-sacrificing compassionate act to visit you, put you down, demean you, act abusively, reduce you to who he believes you to be, accept that you’re simply ‘too tired’ to hurt yourself as being a valid reason to abandon someone, and then leave again.’

‘It’s not like that,’ Efnisien said. ‘And you know what, even if it is, so what? You weren’t there, you don’t know how I treated him. He might need someone to take it out on you know, all the anger he has about how he was brought up. He might as well have a fucking target like me so he can get it out of his system.’

‘Target?’ Dr Gary said. ‘Is that what you think you are when he visits?’

‘I didn’t say- _Goddamnit_. No, I just- Well, even if I do, who cares? I love him! He’s the only family I have left, and he didn’t abandon me.’

_‘Efnisien,’_ Dr Gary said, and then made an expression that was almost like a flinch, like he was sharply reeling back what he was going to say. And Efnisien just knew somehow that Dr Gary was going to say _He did abandon you,_ which made no sense at all. Gwyn was the only one who _didn’t_. ‘I think it’s worth spending some time objectively thinking about the reasons Gwyn might visit you. I don’t – and have never believed – that your feelings towards each other are reciprocal.’

‘Yeah, _duh,_ you want me to sit here and list all the reasons they wouldn’t be? We could be here all day.’

‘This is somewhat my point as to why it’s not constructive for him to visit you and continue to treat you this way,’ Dr Gary said drily. ‘While the benefits of his visits outweighed the cost, I didn’t see the point in saying anything about how…deleterious those visits have actually been to your mental health. But for a year now, Efnisien, you report on your visits from Gwyn as though they are distressing events, and not events you enjoy. It’s possible to want to see someone, and not recognise that it hurts you to see them.’

Efnisien frowned, staring down at the plant. Frustrated and unable to follow the thoughts in his own mind, he got up and walked over to the plant even though it was near Dr Gary’s side of the office, and even walking towards him reminded him of Henton. He picked up the plant – the ceramic pot was way heavier than he expected, and walked back to his chair. He put the plant down beside it, grabbed several of the tissues from the tissue box that was there for all the people that had breakdowns or hayfever, and dampened some of them with the water in his glass.

He picked up the pot, put it on his lap, and started wiping the dust off the leaves. And then he felt abruptly guilty and looked up at Dr Gary, frowning.

‘You didn’t say I couldn’t,’ Efnisien said quickly.

‘I didn’t,’ Dr Gary said, watching him with a bemused expression on his face.

‘You don’t think I’m hurting the plant?’

‘I don’t think you’re hurting the plant at all,’ he said.

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said, his heart racing. ‘Cool.’ He went back to wiping the leaves carefully. It was better to have something else to focus on while talking about this. ‘The thing is- I don’t know. I don’t think Gwyn believes I can change. I think he just believes I can _stop._ Like…someone who craves murder all the time but just…doesn’t do it anymore, but always wants to do it forever. And I scared him when I told him that I didn’t want to see him for two weeks, because he suddenly believed that I’d started again. So this time was worse than normal because he was scared. That’s what I figure. So, no, the visit wasn’t fun, but like, it’ll go back to normal next month. It’ll be like before.’

Dr Gary was silent for a long time, and Efnisien knew he didn’t like it, but he also wasn’t willing to give up those visits. He couldn’t. One day he was going to lose everyone, and Gwyn might not understand him, but he still visited, even when…

Efnisien stared down at the plant and frowned.

‘It’s not good for him to visit me though,’ he said.

‘I don’t believe it is, no,’ Dr Gary said mildly.

‘Do you think _he_ knows that?’

‘I think just as you depend on those visits for personal reasons, he also depends on those visits for personal reasons, and some of those reasons are locked up in irrational reasoning.’

‘You’re taking no prisoners today, Doc,’ Efnisien said, moving onto another leaf. The dust was pretty stubborn. He yawned suddenly, and felt bad. Normally he had enough warning that he was going to yawn and could hide it. If he ever yawned in front of Crielle… He focused on moving the tissue in long, slow strokes. The leaves were glossy once the dust was gone. ‘Besides, when everyone leaves, he’s still going to be visiting. That’s something.’

‘I’ll still be here,’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien paused, and then he looked up at Dr Gary. The guy’s expression was completely calm, and Efnisien hadn’t really thought of it that way before. But so far, it was true. Dr Gary always turned up. He’d only ever had to reschedule twice in two years, and unlike Gwyn, he didn’t just cancel last minute and then put things off for a month. And Efnisien realised he actually believed that Dr Gary would be there.

Which was really weird.

‘May I make an observation?’ Dr Gary said.

‘You’re making a ton of them this session, you’re _so_ mad he called you.’

‘I’m disturbed as to his motivations for calling specifically after today’s visit,’ Dr Gary clarified. ‘My observation is this – when he cancelled his second last visit, you felt motivated enough to go to a bookshop, buy a book, and that was how you met Arden. Have you ever thought of what you might put in the place of his visits? Even if you still kept seeing him, but maybe less often? Perhaps once every two or three months?’

‘He wouldn’t go for that,’ Efnisien said immediately.

‘He might not. I’m asking you what _you_ might put in place of those visits. What might you be motivated to do, if he _stopped_ coming as often?’

‘I would’ve just worked yesterday. And maybe felt less sick.’

Efnisien said the sentence, and then the words reverberated back to him and he swallowed.

‘I don’t know why I said that. It had nothing to do with him. I ate weird food the night before, and like, the thing with Bridge happened and my stomach was being stupid even before Gwyn visited. I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘What are you feeling around the fact that you said you’d feel less sick if he visited less often?’

Efnisien gritted his teeth together. ‘Like an asshole. It’s not his fault. And of the two of us, I was so bad to him, so like what, I can’t put up with a bad stomach sometimes? Normally I just don’t eat the day he comes over, and sometimes the night before, and it’s fine.’

Dr Gary shifted in his chair. ‘Efnisien, is that a reliable response to his visiting? The stomach upsets?’

‘Huh?’ Efnisien said. ‘Oh, I have to do that like, most of the time anyway. For most things. I couldn’t eat before seeing you for ages, though I can now. Except today. But yeah, okay, pretty consistently it’s just safe not to eat for like I don’t know, twelve to eighteen hours before he comes over. It’s me. I get nervous. It’s hard trying to seem like you’re not a criminal to someone you were a criminal to. It’s not like he’ll ever believe me.’

‘That circles back around to my point nicely,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You’re not the only one able to carry a great capacity for dissonance. We can talk about his reasoning for the rest of the session, but the crux of my point is this – he is treating you as a canvas to paint his irrational thoughts upon. If he’s angry at you as a victim, he should say so, or get help, instead of abusing you. If he’s upset with you as a victim, he should say so, or get help, instead of abusing you. If he doubts you, and genuinely believes you’re still committing crimes, then he’s not there to assist in your recovery, and he’s participating in harming himself by being around you. He could call the police. He could call me. If he believes you, and genuinely believes he’s the one stopping you from committing crimes, he’s accepted a saviour construct that isn’t helping you.

‘Whatever the reasons for what’s going on right now, there is one clear conclusion, he is hurting you, and he is hurting your belief in your recovery. As your therapist, I feel quite comfortable saying that it’s not useful for your recovery – something he professes to care about too – to spend regular time with someone you abused, who doesn’t believe in your potential to change, or doesn’t _behave_ like he believes in it.’

‘Did you tell him this?’ Efnisien said, trying not to look at _any_ of the things that came up in his head in response to Dr Gary’s words.

‘No,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I told him that you’re still seeing me regularly, you’re making incredible progress at a degree we hadn’t foreseen, and you’re benefitting from seeing more people at this time in your life.’

‘It just- It just got to me that you called him a parole officer and I realised he kind of _was_. We’re not- I don’t think we’re family. Like I know we _are._ But we were way more family when things were fucking awful, when I was awful to him, than now. If he’s moved on, then like, shouldn’t he just fucking move on?’

Efnisien clutched the ceramic pot and stared down at the plant. There was a tiny dusty cobweb underneath one of the leaves. He didn’t feel well.

‘We just…don’t really seem to be good for each other,’ Efnisien said. ‘I know I can’t be good for him. But… And I don’t want him to leave me. I thought he’d be happy not to see me for those two weeks. I kind of thought I’d be doing him a favour, actually, while doing myself a favour too. He _hated_ me last time. I was awful. I can’t win no matter what I do. If I’m not an asshole, if I’m an asshole, if I see him, if I don’t see him, he’s always going to assume the worst.’

‘That’s true.’

‘And he has good reasons to.’

‘That’s also true,’ Dr Gary said. ‘At least, based on behaviour you engaged in, in the past. May I engage in an analogy for a moment?’

‘Fuck,’ Efnisien said, staring down at the plant. ‘Do you think the plant looks happier?’

‘I think it looks less dusty,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I’m not sure a plant is able to feel happy.’

‘It looks greener,’ Efnisien said. ‘You can say your analogy. Go off or whatever.’

‘Imagine a scenario where someone has trained a dog with a generally sweet disposition to engage in dog fights, in a dog fighting ring. That dog has learned to like dog fights because it gets rewarded for them and it doesn’t get rewarded for being sweet. It has never had the chance to live the life of a loved pet that gets rewarded for behaving well, so it has learned to enjoy biting other dogs, even dogs it lives with. Now imagine that the dog is finally taken out of that dog fighting ring and is being taught not to bite, realises it doesn’t actually enjoy biting, and that the benefits of living as a nonviolent pet far outweigh what it learned of dog fighting.’

Efnisien just stared at him, trying to decide if he should mock Dr Gary for the analogy, even as he related way too much to it and hated that he did. _I’m the dog, in this scenario, but I suppose everyone else is a dog in this scenario too._

‘Imagine that the dog is learning more and more what it means to live a different life. But every month a dog that it used to bite comes back and treats it like a vicious fighting dog, because that’s all the other dog remembers. Of course we understand why the bitten dog reacts as a bitten dog, but do you think it will help the fighting dog who wants to live as a calm, non-violent dog – to be treated like a vicious fighting dog, when it’s trying – and successfully living as something else?’

‘Crude, but I get it,’ Efnisien said finally. ‘But he won’t ever let me not see him.’

‘Because he holds power over you.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, wanting to stroke the leaves but not sure if he should. Eventually he put the pot down on the table and thought the plant looked happier. Even though plants couldn’t feel happiness like people could.

‘He holds power over you, Efnisien.’

‘I mean, he…’

Efnisien’s brain felt like it had broken, and Dr Gary sipped at his water, and then put the glass back down and said nothing. After a while, he cleared his throat and still didn’t say anything. It was up to Efnisien now, he had to fill the stupid silence.

‘I don’t want to stop seeing him,’ Efnisien said.

‘Maybe not forever, but you certainly _did_ want to take another two weeks before seeing him again. He didn’t let you. He could have called me _then_ if he were that concerned. I could have reassured him that I thought you were making a good decision and moving into a period in your life where you are becoming more independent. Instead he immediately chose to ignore your boundaries and your wishes and assumed his wants and needs mattered more than yours. You may not wish to stop seeing him, but it’s within your rights to ask for two weeks extra between his visits. He denied you those rights.’

‘Like I did to him.’

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said. ‘We’ve talked about that for three years, now we’re talking about what it means when someone starts doing that to you. Do you think he is so virtuous and pure a human being, that he’s not capable of also absorbing some bad and destructive habits from living in that household?’

‘I just think I deserve it,’ Efnisien said, shrugging.

‘I want to talk to you about the Karpman drama triangle. Have you heard of it?’

Efnisien shook his head, feeling wary and curious at the same time. When Dr Gary changed tack like that, it usually meant something big was coming, and it wasn’t always going to be good.

‘Let me draw it for you.’ Dr Gary stood up and brought out a notepad and a ballpoint pen, drew a triangle and then wrote a word at each of the different points. ‘This triangle was developed over fifty years ago, and it’s incredibly useful for therapists themselves, because when you’re just starting out you can find yourself in the drama triangle without realising. Everyone can. It’s incredibly easy to end up in it. Here.’

He handed the piece of paper to Efnisien.

The words were Victim, Rescuer, and Persecutor.

‘Once you’re in the triangle, chances are high that you’re going to hit all three of the points at some point. I believe Gwyn’s in the triangle. And I believe you’re cooperating and participating in that triangle, and enabling him. It’s a dynamic model, we _expect_ at some point that people in the triangle will touch upon all three. We know that Gwyn has been your victim, we know that he has been your rescuer – you’ve called him that yourself and he certainly views himself that way – and now he’s shifted to persecutor. He’s still victim and rescuer. The belief is being in this triangle _at all,_ is not a great place to be. They’re all indelibly tied to each other. Victims – by Karpman’s definition when we’re talking about the drama triangle – depend on rescuers, rescuers depend on people to save, persecutors depend on scapegoats.

‘Rescuers usually become persecutors at the point where their martyrdom festers and they feel so resentful they begin to feel justified hurting other people. We see this in therapy, with therapists who lose their way and resent their clients.’

‘Henton,’ Efnisien choked out.

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said heavily. ‘He was also in the triangle and either didn’t see it, or chose not to act on it. Through Hillview, we regularly do work with the Karpman drama triangle with our supervisors because it’s normal and natural to feel resentment towards clients in this line of work. It doesn’t have to lead to persecution, but it will if it’s not checked and evaluated from a place for mindfulness and understanding.’

‘Have you been in the triangle?’

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said frankly. ‘And I will be again. Like I said, many people end up in the triangle, for many reasons. But once you’re in it, denial can make it hard to see how easy it is to become a persecutor once you situate yourself as a rescuer. Likewise, victims struggle to see how they could be persecutors once they have situated themselves as a victim.’

Efnisien thought it made sense. For something that was just a dumb triangle on a piece of paper, it explained even some of the actions of the serial killers he’d read about, which was wild to him.

‘So how do you…get out of it?’ Efnisien said.

‘That’s a great question. Persecutors need to embrace self-accountability, usually through crisis.’

‘That’s…familiar,’ Efnisien said, rolling his eyes, and Dr Gary laughed softly.

‘Yes, all right. So you understand that. Rescuers need to understand that they can be helpful and supportive without expecting reciprocation, they need to recognise that they are meant to empower instead of disable. At their healthiest, they will embrace and encourage self-responsibility instead of dependence. They will trust and believe in the person they’re rescuing.’

Efnisien found himself thinking: _Like Arden,_ and then felt shocked at the thought. But wasn’t it kind of like Arden? Maybe he just believed that because he didn’t want to believe that he and Arden were doing something really toxic together.

‘Victims must learn to take responsibility for themselves and engage in self-care, instead of looking for saviours to do this work for them. They will step into problem-solving and leadership abilities. Now, don’t get me wrong, none of this work is easy. And some of it is lifelong. Sometimes we break through one section and come back to another. Or sometimes we improve one aspect, and another falls apart. But it’s simply useful to know when you’re in the triangle, where you are most destructive in the triangle, and what to do in order to get out of it.’

‘This is kind of cool.’

‘It is, isn’t it?’ Dr Gary said, with a smile. ‘We can look at your issue with Bridge through the lens of the drama triangle. In it, you have fallen back into the position of powerless victim, and your response has been to want to remove or not acknowledge your power by simply not participating in life, because it hurts. This is incredibly understandable because it _hurts._ But your response – while understandable – isn’t going to be a long term solution. To really help you break out of this cage in a healthier way, you would need to…do what?’

‘Keep going to choir,’ Efnisien said. ‘And maybe…shit, look at the other groups I shortlisted, just in case. And probably trust Bridge that if she hasn’t told me to leave, maybe she doesn’t want me to leave yet, even though she might later.’

‘Exactly! Those are all _excellent_ examples. Some of them might be too hard to do right now, and Efnisien, that’s okay. It’s okay. Seeing solutions isn’t always having the energy or impetus to follow through on them.’

Efnisien crumpled the page without meaning to, thinking back to how it felt when Bridge told him that she didn’t want them to talk anymore. The stupid piece of paper wasn’t going to make that any easier, but he could see Dr Gary’s point, and he didn’t feel as weird and bad as he felt when he’d walked in.

‘You really think Gwyn’s on this,’ Efnisien said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And the thing is, when one person is in the triangle, they will…try and triangulate others back into destructive drama triangles. Gwyn in the position of persecutor puts you in the position of victim. You in the position of victim can encourage people into the rescuer role – this is why it’s so important for therapists to keep a close eye on where they’re at in the triangle. If you want, we can talk more about transactional analysis in the future, since it sounds like you find it interesting.’

‘Okay.’

‘If you’re feeling powerless around Gwyn, what’s something healthy you could do to break out of your own triangle around him?’

Efnisien frowned, liking that it was presented as a puzzle instead of some stupid emotional confrontation. That way he could come up with solutions without thinking about how hard they’d be to actually do.

‘Um. Probably… I could actually not be there when he came over after telling him that I need some time off, instead of just giving in to him? And I could remind him if he’s that concerned, he can call you?’

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said, smiling like Efnisien had said something really clever, which made Efnisien feel stupidly warm in response. ‘Other things you might consider are having someone there with you when Gwyn visits, like Arden. Or even asking Gwyn not to violate your privacy, dismiss you, or talk down to you, when he does. Think back to the times Arden has clearly asked you not to talk down to him in calm, clear, but firm language. Sometimes that’s all it takes for someone to really think about what they’re saying, and the tone they’re saying it in.’

Efnisien didn’t think he’d ever want to say something like that to Gwyn. The idea of it made his skin crawl, he thought just…not being there was probably easiest.

‘In our next session, I think it might be beneficial to talk to you about some of the physiological responses you have to stress.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said tiredly, carefully straightening out the paper before folding it up and putting it in his pocket, next to the stupid emergency sheet which he hadn’t taken out since Dr Gary had told him to start carrying around again.

‘Before we finish up, I think it would be good to talk about something less fraught. Is there anything good that happened this week? You can pick anything at all.’

Efnisien thought about the texts with Isabelle and the bow, and then thought about the stormy morning earlier in the week, and thought it was probably stupid but…what the hell.

‘I saved a snail,’ Efnisien said.

Dr Gary tilted his head and looked at him, and then he opened his mouth and didn’t quite speak straight away. ‘You…saved a snail?’

‘It was like, the morning of that big storm. And it was in the garage but it was heading towards all the cars and there’s _nothing_ there, like no food, just oil and bitumen and crap, so I like, I picked it up, and it started eating me, and then I found it a place that wasn’t totally flooded but had plants it could eat where it would be protected and put it there instead.’

Dr Gary’s lips quirked, almost like he really wanted to smile and was trying to hold it back. He watched Efnisien for a long time.

‘It was eating you?’ he said.

‘Oh yeah, so, I looked it up. I felt this weird-ass fucking scraping, and it turns out snails have this like radula, that looks like, I don’t know, four steel combs fused together, and that’s how it scrapes the crap out of leaves and stuff. It didn’t hurt or anything. I mean it’s a snail. But yeah. I dunno. That was kind of a nice morning. Not just- Not just because of the snail. I think maybe I like storms. I don’t know.’

‘Did you like them as a child?’

‘I didn’t care about the weather as a kid,’ Efnisien said. ‘Unless Crielle was annoyed at it or something. I don’t remember storms.’

‘Do you like snails?’

‘I mean they’re kind of weird but yeah, they’re okay. They’re just snails. They have cool shells. And like, eyes. And skin. And mouths. And they’re small and slow but there’s still so many of them so they’re doing something right, y’know?’

‘It sounds as though there are many things you like about them.’

‘I like weird creatures,’ Efnisien said quickly, he wasn’t sure how Dr Gary would react. ‘Like, I have this octopus called Stupidhead. I mean- I don’t _have_ it, it’s like a pet? A make-believe pet. I imagined him. Shit. I’m going to shut up.’

‘Please don’t,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You imagined a pet octopus?’

‘No, well- I mean…’ Efnisien’s fingers splayed, and then he drummed the armrest a few times trying to think it over. ‘Like, I haven’t actually thought about him in a while. But I read this book on deep sea creatures, and I read about the dumbo octopus, you know, it’s like a deep sea octopus with short stubby legs and flappy ears except they’re fins, not ears, but… Anyway, so, and I imagined that I lived in the deep sea, in a house, where no one could get to me, and there was a dumbo octopus and I kind of imagined ripping it apart actually, um, for a while.’

‘I see,’ Dr Gary said. ‘What happened next?’

‘Well, it came back,’ Efnisien said, feeling himself blush. This was so embarrassing. His heel dragged along the floor. ‘I couldn’t seem to kill it, because maybe I’d imagined it, but I’ve killed other things I’ve imagined but…this one just kept coming back. So I called him Stupidhead, because who would want to hang out with someone like me right? After _that,_ right? But he just danced and floated in front of me, and he hung out, and he’s cool, and sometimes I imagine hanging out with him in the sea.’

‘How long have you been thinking of that for?’

‘Um. Just before that time I collapsed in like…in Arden’s shop. When he called you? Just before then. I don’t think of Stupidhead a ton? Just sometimes. If I feel bad, he’s nice to think about it.’

‘Efnisien, may I please make a note?’

‘What? Oh. Sure. Why?’

Dr Gary was turning, and he didn’t answer straight away. He typed for ages, not just a sentence or two, but what sounded like three or four fucking paragraphs. Efnisien stared at him, hoping that Dr Gary wasn’t about to tell him that he was nuts for hallucinating an octopus.

When Dr Gary turned back, there was an odd look on his face, and Efnisien couldn’t place it at all.

‘It’s extraordinary,’ Dr Gary said quietly, ‘and extremely creative of you, to come up with a way to both have a pet, and construct a coping mechanism for yourself purely from your imagination. Do you still imagine hurting Stupidhead?’

‘Not after that first time,’ Efnisien said, feeling like he was somehow transparent and about to be blown away by a bit of breeze. Dr Gary’s response was not what he’d been expecting. _At all._

‘I know it’s not possible now, for many reasons, but one day you are going to recognise how far you’ve come, Efnisien, and you will be amazed.’

‘It’s just- I mean… It’s not anything like…’

Efnisien petered off because the expression on Dr Gary’s face wasn’t changing, and he realised that Dr Gary was maybe actually feeling really fucking _emotional_ because Efnisien had daydreamed about an octopus.

‘It’s not that important, is it?’ Efnisien said.

‘It’s not only what you imagined,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Even the progress of this session, from you desperately wanting to walk out, to exercising restraint and self-control, to finally talking to me openly about many subjects, being receptive to considering different viewpoints, and even being receptive to offering some things you’ve enjoyed during what is – honestly – a difficult week that would have hurt anyone at all. But learning that you’ve been creating new resources for yourself outside of what we discuss together, yes, that’s important. I hadn’t realised you’d come so far with…how you view animals, and your interactions with them. Did you want to hurt the snail?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘Like I thought about it, especially after. I thought about it a lot. But I didn’t want to.’

‘You know,’ Dr Gary said, smiling, ‘I believe garden snails are very easy to keep as pets.’

‘Oh no,’ Efnisien said, terror gaping inside of him. ‘No, no it’s cool. It’s cool, I don’t need any pets. I don’t- Nothing needs to- I don’t think that’s good. That’s not a good idea.’

‘That’s fine,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Maybe something to think about one day.’

‘Nothing needs to live with me, for like, its own sake.’

‘Well…’

Dr Gary tilted his head and it wasn’t until Efnisien followed his gaze that he realised Dr Gary was looking at the pot plant.

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said, looking back at Efnisien like he was content. But then the expression cleared and turned more businesslike. ‘Can you tell me more about your octopus? I’m genuinely interested, and I don’t know much about the deep sea at all.’

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said, scratching behind his ear and staring at the plant. Weirdest fucking session ever. ‘Um. Sure. It’s- I mean… Yeah.’

As he started talking more about the Mariana Trench and deep sea creatures he was aware that his stomach felt more settled than it had all day. When he remembered that he was going to see Arden the next day, he sank back into the chair and tried not to think about anything else they’d talked about, focusing only on that stupid little octopus, cutely floating and dancing inside of his head, and the fact that Arden was in his life, and hadn’t walked away.


	36. Forest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes Efnisien thinks he's doing fine but actually he's really raw and even though he thinks he's doing great he's still taking me out at the knees. Anyway, it's Arden-and-Efnisien time!
> 
> (Also no, Arden is not referring to Gwyn in this chapter at all, at any point).

_Hey sweetheart, just wanted to remind you that we’re not doing any kind of scene tomorrow, in case you were expecting that. We’ll save that for Sunday if you’re still in the mood. Do you like forests?_

Efnisien stared at Arden’s text and frowned.

 _I don’t not like them. Why?_ he wrote.

_Would you like them if Isabelle and I happened to be in one, and we were walking around? I want to take her for a walk this afternoon. Mostly she will run herself ragged while I throw a gross stick and you can pretend you don’t know us._

Efnisien smiled in spite of himself. He was disappointed to remember they weren’t going to be doing a scene. But Arden had been clear about that from the beginning, because he was concerned about how Efnisien would react afterwards. Efnisien didn’t really think he’d need a ton of time afterwards to recover or anything, it wasn’t like a massage was going to make him depressed he was pretty sure.

He didn’t recall having ever been in a forest before, for anything. Crielle didn’t do nature, unless it was chopped twigs and flower arrangements and other bullshit to bring inside to create a ‘nature theme’ in an otherwise sparkling clean home. Even the gardens at the An Fnwy estate had mainly been there for show. He wasn’t ever really encouraged to play outside unless he wanted to hurt someone or something, and Crielle wanted him to do it away from the house in case she had guests.

 _I’d like that,_ he wrote, thinking that it might be nice to see a forest from inside of one.

Arden sent back twenty emojis which all gave the impression of excitement and happiness, as well as a slew of trees and one – probably accidental, Efnisien thought – Christmas tree.

After that he worked, drifting about in a calm fog. He avoided all thoughts around choir rehearsal on Saturday night, and he didn’t think much about the session. He was still shocked that he’d brought up Henton at all, let alone like _that._ He didn’t even know he kind of blamed Dr Gary for it, and he was horrified to learn that about himself. Dr Gary’s calm acceptance was somehow really fucking terrifying.

It would’ve been easier if Dr Gary had just said it wasn’t his fault because he didn’t know Dr Henton was going to do what he did, and Efnisien had no right to feel what he was feeling.

He tried not to think about Gwyn, mostly successfully. Sometimes the subject crept back into his thoughts and he’d find himself thinking of how to take a break from seeing Gwyn next time. Maybe if he messaged and was even more polite about it. But would that worry Gwyn more? Maybe if he was stupidly clear. Or maybe he could tell Gwyn to call Dr Gary first to check it was okay.

But he hated feeling like Dr Gary had to sign off on all of his actions.

He couldn’t believe he’d brought up Stupidhead in the session. He felt embarrassed whenever he remembered it. Like who brought up some stupid imagined octopus anyway? And Dr Gary had reacted like it was interesting, but he had to do that because it was his job, and he probably didn’t give a shit, and it was just one more thing that’d make him think Efnisien was cracked.

His intrusive thoughts slithered around the place, like people who were encountering their first wave pool. Back and forth, with very little sense of coordination. Sometimes they were front and centre, vivid and sensory, and sometimes they were in the background. When they were front and centre they focused more and more on being Robert Berdella’s victim, a victim of a serial killer that no one knew about. Those thoughts left him shaking and cold and afraid, looking all around his house for someone that wasn’t there.

Someone that had died of a heart attack in 1992.

He also didn’t understand why his thoughts were doing this. He vaguely recalled that he’d had some intrusive thoughts like this as a kid. But he didn’t remember what he thought about, and he didn’t remember what happened to those thoughts. Had he talked to Crielle about them? They were familiar and ancient, yet cryptic and bizarre.

It was a thing he’d have to bring up with Dr Gary one day, and he didn’t want to. The thoughts left him shaken, in a different way to imagining hurting people.

But he put tallies up on the whiteboard, and even with how they affected him, he could tell he wasn’t having intrusive thoughts like he used to.

Life was weird, that way.

*

When Arden pulled up in his car, Isabelle already in the backseat, Efnisien felt something strange and clutching grip him all the way up to his throat. It clawed into his eyes until he nearly said:

_I’ve had a really bad week._

The thought shocked him, because the session with Dr Gary had gone pretty well, and the weekend with Arden had been great, so he didn’t really understand his own feelings. Instead he got into the passenger seat, flinching away from Isabelle’s nose poking into his neck.

Arden made a sound of exasperation, which also made Efnisien flinch.

‘Isabelle, _gentle,’_ Arden said, and Isabelle stopped crowding Efnisien. ‘I swear, she needs to learn everything all over again in the car. That’s good. Good girl. Yes, lie down, that’s it. I’m sorry, she’s so excited. I’d say it was a special occasion but it’s just her.’

‘It’s cool,’ Efnisien said, warily straightening. He risked looking behind him to see her lying down with a kind of tension that indicated she was ready to spring up and start licking him or Arden at a moment’s notice. He resolutely faced forwards again, thinking that actually, maybe he was stupid for agreeing to this.

‘All right. Music time. It’s a bit of a drive, do you need to talk to me about anything before we head out?’

Efnisien shook his head, then froze when Arden’s hand came down and squeezed his knee warmly.

‘Okay, good.’

Arden let go, pulling away from Efnisien’s building, and Efnisien sat there unable to focus on anything at all for a good five minutes. He knew Arden wanted to touch him more, but he hadn’t quite aligned that to reality. Arden had literally just…touched his knee.

Efnisien forced his breathing to calm down and knotted his hands in his lap and stared out of the window.

Eventually, they left the city, heading in the direction of Arden’s place. The roads resolved into fields and farms, patches of trees followed by green rolling meadows and plots of land where sheep grazed.

Thoughts of Robert Berdella coming up while he stared at so much beauty, felt like he was sullying everything somehow. The world going by was green, it looked healthy and beautiful and good, and he was staring at it while watching Berdella snip the tip off a tube of caulk, before smiling in a weird predatory way, and walking over with that hungry gleam in his eyes. He inserted the tip into Efnisien’s ear – Efnisien knew he wasn’t struggling, and he knew it was because he’d tried it in the past and it was one of the reasons Berdella was doing this now – and pushed the plunger so that Efnisien felt air and then pressure and then a thick paste entering his ear and it didn’t hurt at first, it didn’t hurt, and then it _did_ and he still couldn’t make it stop.

He put a mental tally up in his head a few minutes later, tried to focus on the music playing, and instead listened to Isabelle’s panting in the back of the car and thought that actually, dogs panting in excitement sounded a lot like them panting in distress.

The things he’d done were terrible. He didn’t understand how he’d ever wanted to do them, but he had.

He stared down at his hands, nicked with scars and tiny red marks, many he didn’t remember accruing over the years. His slightly reddened knuckles, the lines and etchings in his palms, none of them predicting he would grow up to be a monster, at least he didn’t think so. Palmistry didn’t really have a serial killer line. He stared at his bitten, jagged fingernails, the vertical ridges in his nails that meant they weren’t perfect and smooth anymore.

Crielle used to take his hands and use her own nails to force his cuticles down, week after week after week. She did it for so long he remembered it happening when he was a young child. She pushed too hard sometimes, too far down into the quick, and he still wouldn’t make a noise. But she said it was important that the half-moons show. He needed to have good deportment. Back then his nails didn’t have any ridges, he wasn’t allowed to bite them.

He couldn’t remember how she got him to stop, he only knew that he stopped one day and didn’t start again until just before Hillview.

Absently he pushed at his cuticles, and felt weird.

The landscape around them changed, became wilder. The properties they passed were no longer picture perfect farms, but more bedraggled, and here and there horses grazed by broken down tractors and old tyres. The patches of trees became larger, the trees were older and thicker, the canopies stretching their huge dappled shade over the road.

And then they passed an old wooden sign, something to do with the government, and they were in a forest just like that, cool and thick and deep green. Filled with shadows.

Isabelle was sitting now, unable to contain herself, making small whining sounds that made other memories rush through Efnisien’s mind. Arden hummed along to a song and his thumbs tapped on the steering wheel and he looked lost in his own world, but also super focused at the same time. Efnisien realised he felt kind of safe while Arden was driving. He never felt as safe when Lludd drove. Lludd had a bad habit of speeding when he was angry, and he was usually angry. He made stupid decisions.

Once, it’d just been the both of them in the car, and Lludd had…

Efnisien frowned, he couldn’t remember.

Probably nothing. Probably Lludd had done nothing, and just driven like normal – like a fucking maniac. He could drive normally enough when Crielle was in the car, but sometimes she wasn’t.

Lludd hated him so much.

 _‘You love me more than_ he _does, don’t you, my darling?’ Crielle said to Efnisien, holding his cheeks between her slightly damp hands while she looked over at Lludd, a challenge in her gaze. Efnisien didn’t like these games. He didn’t look at Lludd. She reclined on the white Alma de Luce couch that no one else was allowed to sit on when she wasn’t there, a drink on the table beside her made by the new maid. Lludd sat in his armchair, reading a newspaper. Or he had been, because Efnisien heard the sound of him violently shoving it down onto his lap at her words._

_‘Don’t you?’ Crielle said, her gaze going back to Efnisien’s, sounding forlorn. ‘I thought you did, my sweet.’_

_‘I love you, Mama,’ he said._

_‘But_ more _than Lludd, don’t you? Look at him, that giant ugly beast. Oh, it’s funny, isn’t it? He isn’t nearly as beautiful as we are.’_

_She laughed cruelly, and Efnisien looked over at Lludd and felt something strange and sneaky grow within him, a sense that Crielle was here and she’d protect him. Lludd couldn’t touch him when she was here. And she was touching him now, so he had to be good. He wanted to do what she wanted._

_It was okay. He could laugh too. So he did, he laughed and looked into Lludd’s blue eyes, the way they glittered. The way he just stared, not at Crielle, but at Efnisien. So much hatred there, coiled and waiting, exactly like how he looked at Gwyn sometimes. Except sharper, with knives, and Efnisien’s heart was pounding like it did when Crielle got him an animal, that same nervy-excited-sick feeling in his gut. Everything cramping and churning. He laughed louder._

_‘Mama, I love you so much more than he does,’ he said, laughing._

_‘Of course you do,’ she said. ‘You’re perfect.’_

_She bent down and kissed him on the forehead, and he smiled at her, and then she made a sound of shock and pushed Efnisien away._

_‘Ah! I forgot I have to call Anna-Lee about the luncheon on Friday, I knew there was something I forgot!’_

_She never forgot anything, but Efnisien supposed she was trying to relax, which didn’t happen often. She sprang up and left the room, taking her drink with her._

_And then he was alone in the room with Lludd, and Efnisien’s nerves frittered into something unbearable, and his body had to_ move. _He stood up, ready to leave, and Lludd stood too._

_Efnisien froze and stared up at him. Caught._

_But Efnisien had to move. He had to leave. He_ had to.

_But he couldn’t move, and Crielle wasn’t there anymore, and Lludd walked towards him and-_

Efnisien heard the sound of crunching gravel and stared in confusion at the carpark Arden pulled into. There were two other cars, but no one was around. There were little puddles, like the rain from the storm earlier in the week hadn’t quite left this place, which was weird because it had been sunny at his apartment.

Arden turned off the music, and Efnisien sat there, cold and trying to remember what his body felt like.

Lludd wouldn’t have done anything to him, because Lludd hurt Gwyn, and Crielle protected him anyway. Efnisien thought maybe he’d have to talk to Dr Gary about hallucinating, maybe he was just inventing memories now. Lludd never did anything to him.

 _‘I didn’t touch you,’_ he said, like he was right next to Efnisien, bending down and talking into his ear.

 _I know,_ Efnisien thought, thinking actually he had to pretend to be pretty fucking normal now. Or as normal as he got. He had to fucking _try._

‘Efnisien?’ Arden said quietly.

‘Why am I always like this when we go somewhere?’ Efnisien whispered, staring at the dashboard. ‘I just want to be fine.’

‘Hey,’ Arden said, and Efnisien wanted to look at him but couldn’t make himself. He’d fucked up the beach too. And then he’d fucked up getting fish and chips. And now they were trying again, and he was sitting there wondering why he was making up stories about Lludd. ‘You want to leave?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said with horror. At the very least, he couldn’t imagine doing that to Isabelle, who clearly couldn’t understand why they were still in the car. He could see her out of the corner of his eye, her head pressed up against the car window.

‘Then we’re going to get out of the car,’ Arden said confidently. He undid his seatbelt, opened his door, then leaned towards Efnisien and undid his seatbelt as well. Efnisien was shocked by the familiarity, but Arden was already sliding away and closing his driver door behind him.

The back door opened, and Isabelle waited – vibrating at increasingly intense levels – as Arden clipped a leash onto her collar. She got out when he asked her to, and then she barked several times at nothing at all – her front paws doing a strange little dance on the ground – the sound loud and echoing all around.

Efnisien opened the door and got out into cooler, wetter air that felt like it had the morning of the storm he’d saved the snail. The trees were huge, though around the carpark he could see that people had graffitied them with initials and love hearts and other things that didn’t add anything to the forest and looked bad.

Birds chirped and twittered. Arden locked up the car and set off towards a trail that led away from the road and the carpark, and Efnisien followed automatically, shoving his hands into his pockets. He’d never been anywhere like this in his life. He didn’t even know places like this existed anywhere near him.

‘How did you know about this?’ he said, as he caught up. ‘The forest?’

‘Huh?’ Arden said, looking back in confusion. ‘I mean… Well, I guess when I moved here, I looked at the map of where the reserves and stuff were. It helps me think when I get out into nature.’

Efnisien thought all the trees probably made this a great place to dump a body. Probably bodies had been dumped here. He waited to feel even more creeped out by the forest, but Arden walked decisively with a calmness that was contagious, and Efnisien supposed he knew judo pretty well. Though he was sure Isabelle wouldn’t protect them from anyone.

‘Do you mind if I take her off the leash?’ Arden said about five minutes later when the road and the carpark were no longer in sight. Efnisien shook his head.

Arden had Isabelle sit, then took off her leash. As soon as he made a hand signal that must have meant she could relax, she bounced in wild circles around them and then crashed into the understorey like she wasn’t afraid of anything.

‘Find a stick!’ Arden called after her.

‘Does she understand sentences?’ Efnisien said, watching the leaves of ferns and cycads moving as she barrelled around beneath them.

‘Not really,’ Arden said, wrapping the leash around his hand with a casual confidence that made Efnisien automatically think of Arden doing the same thing with rope. He couldn’t make himself look away. ‘She understands ‘find’ and she understands ‘stick.’ So she will understand both of those words put together. Like, she also understands ‘let go’ and ‘stick.’ So if I say ‘let go of the stick’ or tell her to drop it, she gets it. Some things are easier to teach than others. Like stick? She loves those, she learned that before she was three months old. _Find?_ We had to do scent training for that.’

‘Like…sniffer dog stuff?’

‘Mmhm,’ Arden said, putting the leash in his pocket and turning to Efnisien, beaming up at him. ‘She was okay at it. She has definitely found missing socks in the house. One time I had a client over who lost track of their shirt, and she found that. The client thought I had the most amazing dog.’

‘She is pretty amazing,’ Efnisien said.

‘I mean…’ Arden pursed his lips and then looked in the direction of Isabelle – invisible and only marked by the wild, rocking movements of the plants. ‘She loves to learn, but the side effect of that is she _needs_ attention or she goes nuts and she gets unhappy. She has to be an inside dog unless she’s got something really great to keep her outside. And she’s super smart! So she’s easy to train. But that just means if she’s not stimulated enough, she can be really intelligent about learning to open the fridge and pulling all the stuff out that’s inside! All her pros are also cons, I guess. Most people have no idea what they’re getting into when they get a poodle cross, and that’s not even like, the coat issues. I keep her in a puppy clip because it’s easier, but that just means she needs grooming more often because of it. Like, poodles are the second smartest dog in the world. Most people just think they’re cute or fancy. She’s razor sharp. I love her _so_ much, but you can feel how much she needs people and needs to do things.’

‘She’s like you,’ Efnisien said.

Arden looked at Efnisien sharply, and then his expression changed, and a slow smile crossed his face. ‘You saying I’m a poodle cross, sweetheart?’

‘No,’ Efnisien muttered, his cheeks flushing.

‘How’re you feeling?’ Arden said, walking closer and bumping gently into him.

‘I’m okay. I’ve- The week’s not been great. But I think most of my weeks are like that and it’s going to get depressing real fast if I talk about it.’

‘Ef, we can talk about those things,’ Arden said. ‘You don’t overshare. You hardly talk about your life at all. A lot of the time you’re made to, because you freak out over something, but it’s not like I’ve ever seen you and you’ve just started dumping on me about how hard things are. And secondly, you _can_ do that sometimes. It’s allowed.’

‘I haven’t even asked you how you’re doing.’

‘I’m doing good!’ Arden said. ‘I did buy some ribbon, but not five hundred dollars’ worth. And I get to see you today _and_ Sunday. I started seeing my therapist again a few weeks ago, just to like, check in on a few things, and that’s helping too.’

‘Is that… Um. Because of me?’

‘A little,’ Arden said honestly, even as Efnisien’s stomach dropped. ‘I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to hurt you by accident. She helped reframe things more like…well hurting each other happens, and I can mitigate that, but I can’t stop it. But yeah it’s not really like me to be interested in someone the way I’m interested in you, and I was a bit spooked.’

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said, frowning. ‘Why?’

‘I’m- I mean you know I can get obsessive. Not quite like you do, obviously, with the intrusive thoughts and stuff. But you know I can get really into hobbies and abandon them. And I thought I was maybe doing that with a person.’

Efnisien stared down at the dark brown, wet soil beneath his feet. There were bits of white stone peeping out of the ground, and mosses gamely trying to grow across the path.

‘What did she say?’ Efnisien said finally, because he didn’t know how to swallow the feeling that maybe he was just a hobby. Of all the options Dr Gary had given him when he’d warned him about the kind of people who would want to get to know him – the tourist, the predator, the naïve one and so on, the hobbyist hadn’t been on the list at all.

‘Well,’ Arden said, sighing, ‘she said that there was no sure-fire way of knowing what was going on, with the way my personality works, until some time had passed. Man, I so didn’t expect to be talking about this today. How did we end up talking about me?’

‘I asked,’ Efnisien said, smiling weakly.

‘Right,’ Arden said, laughing. ‘Mostly she said it was good of me to come in and check, because she thought it meant that I cared about you and was trying to be responsible no matter what. And she said it’d be a good idea for me to keep coming in for a while – just every two or three weeks – and touch base, because I haven’t been in a relationship before and she thought it might bring up some Laurie stuff. Which it kind of hasn’t so far, but I definitely see the sense in it.’

Efnisien didn’t say anything for a while. As scared as he was that Arden was going to drop him, he was also amazed that Arden had gone to therapy to make sure he wasn’t going to hurt him. Who did that?

‘Wouldn’t you rather have all these relationship feelings for someone you can have sex with?’ Efnisien said.

‘We’ve touched on this before,’ Arden said. ‘But for me, power exchange matters most. I love sex, I need to have it, and that’s why I can still have it even though we’re together. Sex is an easy problem to solve, Ef. At least for me. Power exchange is different. And it has a different feeling depending on who you’re doing it with. I kind of knew from very early on that we had some kind of chemistry, and it’s only grown since. It’s a chemistry I like. I really enjoy… I really enjoy responsiveness and sensitivity. Like I struggle with subs who have seen everything before and need to be caned like fifty times to give any sort of reaction at all, who pride themselves on hardly reacting.’

Efnisien tensed. After thinking of Robert Berdella the way that he had, imagining Arden with a cane was not comfortable at all. His skin crawled. He didn’t want to think about Arden whaling on some person over and over again, and the sound it would make, and the fact that Arden _enjoyed_ it.

‘You…’ Efnisien said, his voice smaller than normal. ‘You’re… not going to do that to me, right?’

 _‘No,’_ Arden said.

Efnisien couldn’t look at him. ‘But you want to?’

‘Efnisien, _no,’_ he said. ‘I don’t want to do things to people that they don’t want to experience. And I’m not secretly wanting to get you to the point where you want to do those things. We’re not on an escalator, constantly going up. Kink doesn’t work like that. Where we are right now is _great_.’

Arden stopped walking, and Efnisien did too, staring down at green mosses and realising for the first time that there were different types of moss. He knew somewhere, deep down, that of course there were different types of moss. But his brain had shoved it all into the ‘moss’ category when he was a child. Moss didn’t matter. It was one more thing he wasn’t allowed to interact with.

Arden came closer and slid his fingers around Efnisien’s wrist, tugging his hand out of his pocket and then holding his hand. He pulled Efnisien closer. Even here in the forest, where Efnisien hadn’t seen or heard anyone else, he looked around as Arden tugged him in.

‘I’m sorry for being like this,’ Efnisien said.

‘Of course you’re worried about those sorts of things,’ Arden said, and Efnisien shivered as Arden’s hand smoothed over his back. It was over his jumper, but it didn’t have to be. They had a whole…written form about it now. Just the idea that Arden could slip his fingers beneath Efnisien’s shirt made his thinking short out. He made himself concentrate with some difficulty. ‘It’s new for you, and you’ve grown up with bad associations with it. Ef, I hope that…the way we talked about everything on the weekend helps you to kind of step back a bit and realise I’m not going to do those things. And I don’t want to. That form consisted of stuff I liked too. I was very selfish putting things like feminisation on there, and you didn’t have to say yes to _anything._ You can change your mind later too, and decide you don’t like it.’

‘It’s hard to imagine you…hurting people like that.’

Arden said nothing for a long time, one of his hands slowly moving over Efnisien’s shoulder blades.

‘Some people want to be hurt like that,’ Arden said finally.

‘Does your therapist know?’

‘Yeah,’ Arden said, then gripped Efnisien’s arms and pushed him back a bit, so he could look up and smile. ‘She’s kink-friendly. She’s a retired dominatrix, so she gets it. When I said this was like… This could be normal and healthy and stuff, it’s true. She understands me. I had these fears too you know. Like, am I like this because of Laurie, and does that mean when I heal I’ll hate kink, that kind of thing.’

‘Did you find out?’ Efnisien asked.

‘I think some of it is because of what Laurie did,’ Arden said, looking away, his face going a little empty though his grip on Efnisien’s arms stayed strong. ‘Some of it’s just that there’s a level of excitement in kink that I can’t find elsewhere. Some of it’s that I really like taking care of people, and like, as crude as this sounds, a person who’s just been caned or even gently dominated will sometimes need a hell of a lot more care than like, a person having a hard day who might only need a pep talk and a pat on the shoulder. Except for that one who hardly responded to caning at all. He hated aftercare.’

‘Did he?’

‘Oh my god _hated_ it,’ Arden said, laughing, turning back with his brown eyes sparkling. ‘I love that you get something out of being comforted like this. You have no idea.’

He pulled Efnisien back in again, and Efnisien wanted to protest, but there wasn’t any point. He peered over Arden’s shoulder and looked at the world around them. It was quiet and not-quiet at the same time, peaceful yet busy with the sounds of birds and Isabelle running around.

‘It’s not you,’ Efnisien said finally. ‘I’m freaking out in general. I panic about everything.’

‘You said you didn’t have a great week; do you want to talk about it?’

Efnisien sighed, and Arden drew away, reaching out and tucking some of Efnisien’s hair behind his ear. And Efnisien wanted to grab all of these moments and ask why they were happening. Why? Why so many? Why so generously? Why didn’t he have to earn each one? Did people just _do_ this with people they liked? Was it something special about Arden?

‘I was making a friend in the choir, Bridge, you know, I mentioned her a couple of times.’

‘Yeah,’ Arden said. ‘I remember.’

They started walking again, and Efnisien looked sidelong at Arden, then stared up at the tree canopies instead. He felt kind of weird that he’d never known about this place. For a while, he felt like he’d _known_ the city. He knew the richest suburbs, he knew the best restaurants and cafes, he knew where the operas played and he knew where to hunt.

And he’d somehow thought that was the world.

‘Um,’ Efnisien said. Talking like this outside of therapy was so fucking hard. ‘She found out that I’d done bad things in the past. Like criminal things. And she has some stuff like, some stuff in her background that’s not really my place to share but she basically decided she didn’t want to talk to me anymore. And Dr Gary wants me to keep going to the group because she didn’t tell me to leave, but it’s hard to imagine she’s going to want me to go.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Arden said softly. ‘Did she find out that you’d molested people?

‘That’s just it,’ Efnisien said, smiling bitterly to himself. ‘No. She might just think that I’ve robbed people, or…I don’t know. Though I get kind of a feeling that she has like an instinct or something towards the truth. Maybe people can tell. You said I was creepy when you first met me.’

‘You don’t really behave like that anymore,’ Arden said. ‘But I don’t see how you are around others either.’

‘Maybe it’s really obvious to others that I’m awful,’ Efnisien said. ‘And the more they get to know me, the worse it gets.’

Arden took a slow breath and sighed it out. ‘Ef, look-’

At that moment, Isabelle sprinted out of the undergrowth and then ran in front of the both of them, a thick stick in her jaws, revealing her sharp, white teeth. She pushed her face into Efnisien’s thighs, and he stumbled backwards trying to get out of her way.

‘What does she want?’ he said.

‘Isabelle, here,’ Arden said, smiling. ‘She wants you to throw the stick for her. She’s pretty polite about it actually. Here, Izzy, you found a nice stick, didn’t you? What a nice stick. Sometimes she comes back with like, _branches._ Or twigs. And she gets so attached to them but twigs don’t throw at all.’

Arden took the stick while Isabelle was still holding onto it, and she let go immediately. He threw it with some power straight back into the forest, and she barked in excitement sprinting all the way after it.

‘And I’m going to do that another thirty or forty times until she’s tired and my arm hurts,’ Arden said, laughing ruefully. ‘Sometimes we do it with balls, and then I can use the thrower. But sticks are her favourite.’

A few minutes later, Isabelle bounced back through the ferns towards them and pushed the stick into Efnisien’s legs again. He stood there, staring down at her.

‘Why is she like this with me?’ he said, staring at Arden.

‘Some dogs are like that, you know. If they can’t have your attention, they decide they really want it. Maybe she thinks that if she shows you how much fun she is, you’ll really like her.’

‘She thinks I don’t like her?’ Efnisien said in alarm.

‘She knows that I like you, and she knows that she’s gotten one pat from you and she liked it. So she wants to be your friend.’

‘God,’ Efnisien whispered. He knew that. He did. Dogs were like that. Puppies especially.

‘Do you want me to call her away?’ Arden said.

Efnisien knew Arden could have done that anyway. He knew Arden wasn’t against the idea of Efnisien making friends with Isabelle, which was why he was letting her push against his legs in the first place.

 _I could hurt her. I’m going to hurt her. I could do it._ The words cascaded through his mind. All the sentences he’d said before, and he knew Arden would calmly tell him that he could choose not to.

It was a choice.

He reached down carefully to take the stick without touching her, and to his surprise she dropped it immediately and backed off several steps, then barked loudly at him, her tail wagging vigorously. The stick was damp and wet, and bits of wood flaked off on his hand as he picked it up.

‘I just throw it?’ he said to Arden.

‘Yep! Complicated, I know.’

‘Shut up,’ Efnisien muttered. He threw it into the forest, his throw as weak as fuck. He wiped his hand on his jeans. Isabelle probably wouldn’t even like the throw.

They kept walking, and she came back only two minutes later after having snuffled around in the undergrowth for a while, shoving the stick at Efnisien’s jeans.

‘I don’t even throw well,’ he said to her.

‘Yeah, all throws are good throws,’ Arden said, giggling. ‘She likes that _you’re_ doing it. You’re just going to have to accept it. And it’s good right? You don’t have to touch her as much, does that make it easier?’

Efnisien took the stick and realised it did, actually, make it a lot easier. He threw the stick as they walked, and she ran off, and he stared at his hands.

‘That part just gets grosser the more she chews it,’ Arden said amiably, bumping him gently in the arm with his own. ‘So, the whole Bridge thing, you think you’re going to go back to choir tomorrow?’

‘Maybe,’ Efnisien said.

‘I’d offer to come with you and just hang out or something, but I’m like…busy all through tomorrow.’

Efnisien looked at him in surprise and Arden smiled with apology, but that wasn’t why Efnisien was surprised. He hadn’t expected that Arden would offer something like that in the first place.

‘Don’t you think it’s just going to hit you one day, what I’ve done to people?’ Efnisien said.

‘No,’ Arden said quietly. Isabelle romped back, and Efnisien absently threw the stick again. He didn’t really have to touch her at all, and she didn’t seem to be in the mood to be petted anyway, when she played this game.

‘Why not, though? Like, no offence, but I feel like it hits me all the time. Or that it’s starting to, anyway. Which Dr Gary would so get excited about, in his like, ‘guilt is an unproductive emotion but remorse can be useful’ kind of way.’

‘Because I’m not someone who suddenly realises with a jolt how bad it must have been for your victims,’ Arden said. ‘I _know,_ firsthand, what it’s like, and how damaging it is. And I hated someone for it. And then one day I kind of came to the other side of it and… Look, I don’t know what to tell you. Not everyone can do what I did. I know it would’ve been fine if I’d hated Laurie forever, and my therapist would’ve been great with that too. I honestly ran out of anger for Laurie. One day it was hard to feel it the same way anymore. But I think for me it helped that he was trying so hard. I can’t think about my dad at all, just about, without wanting to kill someone. Mostly him.’

‘Dr Gary says it’s about how I am now, and not how I was then. But that feels really utopian.’

‘I get that.’

‘Do you think it’s utopian?’

‘No,’ Arden said. ‘I don’t. Sometimes I really hope there was someone in Hillview that like… I don’t know, that helped Laurie. That gave him some hope or something. It’s a weird fucking pain to like…hate him for what he did to me, but also feel so bad for what happened to him. Like _none_ of it would have happened in the first place if it wasn’t for my dad, and Laurie took responsibility for everything, and Dad took responsibility for nothing. There’s something in that which fucking kills me. Because it’s not like it erased what Laurie did, right? But… And my dad’s still out there, and I bet the only thing he feels bad about is that he doesn’t have a cute little kid to fuck anymore.’

Efnisien’s eyes flew wide open at how casually and crudely Arden said the words. He couldn’t help but stare, but Arden was facing forwards, something grim on his face. They’d hardly talked about this. Not since that time in the car, when Arden spilled the story and Efnisien felt like he was drowning in it.

It was like Arden peeled back an iron door when he talked about this stuff. He seemed so put together – even when he was freaking out or panicking about a new hobby, he still seemed put together, like he knew exactly how he was going to deal with it. But this was different. Even the way he talked changed. And Efnisien thought he could see a younger, coarser person where the regular Arden normally was. He didn’t know what to do with that information, and he didn’t know what to say.

He threw the stick again for Isabelle and already his arm was getting sore. God. He really was so much weaker than he used to be.

‘But maybe he does have someone,’ Arden said heavily. ‘For a long time I wanted to spend the rest of my life hunting him down and stopping him. Like, I had plans to live near him, keep him under surveillance, make him too scared to hurt another kid ever again. I used to talk to my therapist about it all the time. I took muay Thai for a while, and then mixed martial arts, and I would like…look up rental prices where my dad had moved, thinking about how to spend my whole life watching him. And my old therapist, she told me it wasn’t my responsibility. I had to go actually have a life. She said I had a responsibility to myself before I had a responsibility to all those other imaginary kids that were really my dad’s responsibility not to hurt in the first place. At the time, you know, I called her a callous bitch.’

‘She was the one you saw before you moved here?’

‘Yep,’ Arden said. ‘She was the one who kind of saved my life, actually. But man we had a _big_ argument that day. Or at least, I had a big argument and she kind of reflected everything back to me. But she said something that stayed with me. She said that one of the reasons Laurie suffered so much was because he was taught to take responsibility for things that weren’t his to bear, and Dad had taught him that. And that like, Dad had taught me that too. In a different way. So my wanting to take responsibility for him hurting kids was like…still my dad’s damage working through me. That kind of blew my mind. Anyway, shit, what were we talking about? Right. Uh, no, I don’t think it’s suddenly going to hit me, that you hurt people, or animals for that matter.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, feeling chastened.

‘It’s just that I was willing to give Laurie a second chance. There’s just a part of me now that… really believes people can change. Not everyone. Not most people. But sometimes it really happens. And Efnisien, look, I don’t know why you are the way you are, but you are the person I would _least_ associate with hurting someone on purpose.’

‘I don’t want to call you stupid,’ Efnisien said, frowning. ‘But come on, man. I was literally raised to seem trustworthy, don’t…fucking fall for that.’

‘Your family fucked you up,’ Arden said easily, like he was allowed to say things like that. About Efnisien’s family. He almost got defensively angry in response, a spark of something rising before it died down again. ‘I don’t think you even know how much. And I definitely don’t. But it was – after a while – maybe not easy, but natural for me to give Laurie a second chance after what Dad put him through. And you… You leak out information about your family like you’re still protecting them, and I’ve seen firsthand that you’re bad at protecting yourself.’

_When did this become about me?_

When Isabelle returned, Efnisien didn’t grab the stick straight away, disturbed and lost in his thoughts. It was Arden who took the stick and threw it, and Isabelle started barking again as she went after it, showing no signs of slowing down or losing energy.

‘I don’t like talking about this,’ Efnisien said abruptly. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘Ah, shit. Ef, I’m-’

‘You can’t say they’re bad,’ he said, the words cracking out of him. ‘You can’t. They were bad to my cousin, like really bad, so you can say they were bad to him, because they _were,_ but they gave me everything.’

‘Ef- Sweetheart, after some of the things you’ve said, you-’

‘No, they gave me _everything,’_ Efnisien said hoarsely. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t get it. They weren’t even my parents. My mum and dad wanted nothing to do with me from the moment I was born, and god knows Crielle didn’t have time or energy for an extra kid, and she was so nice to me, and she never had to be. I know what she can be like when she’s not nice, okay? I _know._ So I knew how grateful to be. I _knew.’_

Arden said nothing, and then after a while he let out a low whistle in something like disbelief.

‘What?’ Efnisien said, annoyed.

‘Nothing. I just think all of that’s between you and Dr Gary,’ Arden said. ‘I’m not going to fight with you about that. But damn, I wish you’d record it and play it back to him.’

‘Shut up,’ Efnisien said, feeling stung. ‘Just because you have so much of your shit together, doesn’t mean you’re the arbiter of like… I don’t fucking know. I’m allowed to be fucking grateful. I’m allowed to- I’m allowed to care that they let me live in their house and eat their food and use their money. Crielle tolerated _so_ much from her sister, my mother, you don’t even know.’

‘Oh boy,’ Arden said. Efnisien opened his mouth again, he had no idea what he was going to say, only that he was kind of incensed. All the words vanished when Arden sidestepped towards him and slid an arm around his waist. ‘Oh boy, let’s stop, huh? I’m sorry for going on about it. I didn’t realise it was such a sore subject, and I should’ve. Whatever you want to tell me about your family, you can tell me in your own time, and I’m sorry I didn’t stop when you told me you didn’t like it. That’s my fault.’

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said, as Arden’s arm tightened around him. ‘Is it?’

‘Yeah, buttercup, that one’s on me.’

‘No, but I kept talking about it anyway.’

‘I think maybe you didn’t want to talk about your family much at all today,’ Arden said, sighing.

‘I kept talking about it after I said I didn’t want to,’ Efnisien said, feeling like he’d somehow tricked Arden into apologising. ‘Arden- I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.’

‘I know.’

Efnisien frowned. _Buttercup._ That one had been on the list of things Arden was going to say more often. Efnisien hadn’t really registered it at the time, he’d been really distracted by _babygirl_ to pay much attention. But he liked it.

‘I’m sorry too,’ Efnisien said.

‘I know,’ Arden said. ‘Family stuff is hard sometimes. I find it so easy to talk about mine, especially when I’m with you. I assumed you felt the same way. But you’ve said to me before – more than once – you’re not used to talking about this stuff. I really appreciate that you still try.’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said. He felt strange, like someone had stuck a pin in him, and all the fire was gone. He felt raw though, and like even now, he still betrayed his family over and over again. Like it wasn’t enough that he’d done it to Crielle so badly in the first place, he kept making people think they were bad to him. He had a sudden desire to find her and drop to his knees beside her and just beg her to understand that he didn’t mean to be this way.

His gut hurt.

When Isabelle came back, she didn’t push the stick against anyone’s legs, but instead carried it in her mouth in front of them, trotting along happily.

‘Is she done now?’ Efnisien said.

Arden laughed. ‘If only! She’s taking a break, but she’s not done. She’s having a good time.’

‘I… I am too,’ Efnisien risked saying. He thought aside from all the crazy he’d brought with him, he was enjoying himself.

Arden’s fingers tightened, his hand rubbed Efnisien’s side, somehow soothing and reassuring and something else all at the same time. It was hard to focus, being touched like that.

‘My brain kind of stops working when you touch me,’ Efnisien choked out.

‘I know,’ Arden said, his voice lower than before.

‘So you do it on purpose then.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, fingers curling into Efnisien’s skin through the jumper. ‘I do. I have an unfair advantage against you, baby. I love it _so_ much.’

Efnisien put his hand up over his face, and he could tell Arden was smiling cheekily up at him, like some kind of dork with weird superpowers. It wasn’t fair. Efnisien had felt weirdly angry and raw and guilty before, and now he just felt small and calm. And worse, he kind of liked feeling small and calm.

‘Do you love it too?’ Arden purred.

‘You’re the _worst.’_

‘Oh, sweetheart, you don’t even _know_ the things I want to do with you,’ Arden said, laughing indulgently, like he was imagining so many things that Efnisien couldn’t even begin to. ‘If you think I’m bad now, you’re going to hate me on Sunday.’

Efnisien felt a little nervous at the fact that Arden sounded really fucking pleased about that. But the arm around him, the hand at his side, and the easy way Arden handled him pushed those nerves into the back of his head somewhere, where they could float around with his weird feelings about his family, and his quiet awe of the forest around them.


	37. Sunday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Note:** So just to head something off at the pass, a few folks thought Gwyn was the ‘hardened’ sub that Arden mentioned caning in the last chapter. He wasn’t. Firstly, it doesn’t fit Gwyn’s character established in SOTS (esp. re: his pain tolerance and corporal). Secondly, he’s never been Arden’s sub. SOTS!Gwyn is frankly a pretty soft, yielding masochist who has reasonable limits and can't handle a great deal, and reacts splendidly, which is what Augus loves about him. Hope that clears some things up!

Choir practice came and went. Efnisien waited in the toilet because he arrived five minutes early and he didn’t want to mingle. He didn’t want to wait outside the building in case Bridge wanted to smoke and saw him and thought he was stalking her or pressuring her or something. Waiting in the toilet was convenient because his stomach was cramping anyway. During rehearsal, Anthony got on his case twice for singing timidly and said he was getting ‘lost’ in the music.

‘It’s not like you, Efnisien, lift your voice up a bit more.’

Efnisien felt Bridge looking at him sometimes, refused to look at her, and thought if he opened his mouth to do anything other than sing, a mass of blood was going to fall out and splatter onto the floor. So he nodded at everything Anthony said, tried better, still did badly, and then booked it out of there as soon as rehearsal was over. The last thing he heard was Anthony calling his name probably to tell him to do better next time.

It was awful, basically. But he did it. He went. And maybe he’d go on Wednesday or something. If Bridge wanted to tell him to never come back, she could do that whenever she wanted. Hell, they had his number, she could tell Anthony and Anthony could text him and she wouldn’t even need to talk to him.

Now he was in Arden’s car, it was Sunday morning, and he’d been too nervous to eat. He’d felt fine about the document they’d discussed, about what they’d talked about, and now he felt like he was going to fucking hyperventilate.

He sat stiffly and listened to the music and recognised some of the songs from the previous times he’d been in Arden’s car. Arden sang along like the first time, and would probably do pretty well in the choir. Eventually his easy singing and the fact that he didn’t seem to be freaking out at all helped a little, and Efnisien sat there with his hands too stiff in his lap thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be _terrifying,_ but he was definitely going to make so many mistakes that Arden would regret everything.

When they pulled into Arden’s driveway, Efnisien sat there staring ahead blankly and thinking that maybe he just liked going through documents about highly speculative subjects and the reality was he didn’t want to do _anything._

‘Come on,’ Arden said, opening his car door.

‘Uh huh,’ Efnisien managed, his voice higher than normal.

When they walked into Arden’s house, Isabelle was there, wiggling all over, and then after Arden rubbed vigorously at her head and ears and neck, he sent her to the mat. He walked into the kitchen, washed his hands, then pulled out two glasses. That felt so normal that Efnisien managed to draw a breath that didn’t feel strangled.

‘On a scale of one to ten, how much are you freaking out right now?’ Arden said conversationally.

‘Jesus fuck,’ Efnisien breathed. ‘Like a…seventy.’

Arden laughed, and he left the empty glasses on the counter and came back and stood in front of Efnisien. ‘We don’t have to do this today. Or ever. But I also want to say that some nerves are normal. Normally I’d call it off with someone this freaked out, but you’re coming into this from such a warped background I just…wonder if it’s worth showing you _some_ of it so you can understand it better and downgrade to more regular nervousness. But again, we don’t have to do this today.’

‘I don’t think that’s going to help,’ Efnisien admitted. ‘M’probably just going to get worse the longer we put it off.’

‘Yeah, I wondered that too,’ Arden said, reaching out and taking Efnisien’s hand in his. ‘I have a few questions then. I was thinking of working out here in the lounge, since that’s familiar for you. Do you mind if Isabelle is in the kitchen on her mat?’

Efnisien shook his head, and then he looked at her. She was watching them, her tail thumping a few times when Efnisien made eye contact with her. ‘She won’t mind?’

‘No. She just really likes to be near her people, so having her on the mat makes her happier than being sent outside and less likely to actually disturb us than if I put her outside and she gets bored. She’s been on a run today, she’ll conk out for a few hours because of it.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Efnisien said.

‘Good,’ Arden said. ‘Next, for today, I was thinking of starting off with the scene basically in the next few minutes, and then afterwards we’ll maybe watch some TV or something? Hang out? We’re not going to do anything too heavy today, for my own sanity as much as anything. This is new ground for me too, like, you’re new ground because you don’t know your limits or your boundaries, so I thought slow and steady would work. Sound good?’

‘Uh huh,’ Efnisien said.

Arden smoothed his thumb over the inside of Efnisien’s wrist. ‘All right. I’m going to ask you to tell me your safewords in a minute, and that will mean we’ve started. You’ll be good for me, won’t you?’

Efnisien felt like they’d started as soon as Arden walked over to him, so he nodded, his mouth increasingly dry.

‘Remember, you can ask me questions,’ Arden said quietly, ‘and you can say your safewords. I’m on your side in this, sweetheart. Now. Come here, baby, let me hug you.’

Arden lifted his arms, and Efnisien took a small step forwards – it wasn’t like there was much room between them – and felt something in him go quieter when Arden wrapped his arms around him. He ran his hands over Efnisien’s jumper, then made an amused humming sound.

‘I love that you wear stuff like this,’ he said. ‘It’s so soft.’

His arms tightened, and Efnisien leaned closer and resisted the urge to put his head down on Arden’s shoulder.

A couple of minutes passed, Arden’s hands languidly moving over Efnisien’s shoulders, or staying still. One hand slid up to cup the back of Efnisien’s neck, the other firm against his mid back.

‘All right, sweetheart, tell me your safewords and what they mean?’

‘Um,’ Efnisien said, his heart lurching again. He had to swallow twice, his mouth was so dry. ‘Uh. Green means everything’s good. Yellow is for like, slowing down. And blue is to stop and maybe talk about it?’

‘And _definitely_ talk about it,’ Arden said, though there was a smile in his voice. ‘That’s great, thank you for telling me. Hang tight for a moment, there’s not much to set up today.’

He withdrew and looked Efnisien over carefully, then smiled. He went back to the kitchen and ran water in both of the glasses, leaving one on the counter, and bringing one back over to Efnisien.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Drink some of that. It’s normal for your mouth to be dry at times like this, and I want you to be comfortable.’

Arden walked into the loungeroom without even waiting to make sure Efnisien would listen to him, and after a few seconds of indecision, Efnisien sipped at the water feeling a mixture of gratitude and trepidation. Something was different already. Even though Arden was still Arden. This was a new version of him, and Efnisien didn’t know what to do with that information. Seeing new versions of his family had never meant anything good, and for a while, seeing new versions of Dr Gary had sometimes meant really difficult sessions.

Arden opened a wooden chest on the other side of the long couch and drew out a flat, square, pale pink cushion. He placed it down on the floor by the couch, then nudged it into position with his feet until he seemed satisfied.

‘Kneel here,’ Arden said, pointing to it like Efnisien hadn’t been watching. ‘I want you to kneel so that your heels are facing the kitchen, and your face is towards this wall, okay?’

He’d pointed to indicate what he meant, and Efnisien nodded, and then stared at the fact that it was a pink fucking cushion, and he was meant to kneel there and his thoughts slid to a screeching halt. Even with a direct order, he didn’t know what to do. He was already fucking it up. He was already getting it wrong. His hand clenched around the glass of water.

He knew all he had to do was walk over there, but he couldn’t focus on anything except the sensation of something tumbling rapidly through him.

Arden walked up to him, and Efnisien pressed his lips together and looked away. And then Arden reached up and first placed his palm flat over Efnisien’s shoulder, before moving it up and cupping the line of his jaw. He nudged gently. The pressure was subtle, but Efnisien felt it and let his head be turned back. But he still couldn’t make eye contact.

‘What’s going on, sweetheart?’

‘I know I should just be able to do it. I know that. It’s not even that hard. I know. I’m fucking up so much already.’

‘Okay, lean in real close for a second. Like, put your head alongside mine. Go on.’

A hand sliding around his neck and guiding him, and Efnisien did it. He felt like he was bending down to hear a secret.

‘Ef?’ Arden said softly. ‘I want you to say yellow or blue for me, okay? This is a really good time to say it.’

‘But I don’t want to stop,’ Efnisien said, feeling worse.

‘I know, and unless you need to, we’re not stopping.’ Arden’s hand tightened around the back of Efnisien’s neck, his thumb drawing little tingling circles.

‘We’re not?’

‘No, but until you learn how to navigate this kind of panic, this is actually a really wonderful time to use one of your safewords, and I’ll be so proud of you if you do. You can choose the one that means we slow down and I can help you, or the one that means we stop for a bit and just talk about it. But I think now’s a great time to use one.’

‘Um…’ Efnisien thought it over. He still felt like he was being stupid and getting everything wrong, but this was Arden. And that meant something, didn’t it? ‘Um, yellow.’

‘Good,’ Arden breathed, the hand on the back of his neck squeezing in reassurance. ‘That’s so good, baby. Just like that. Okay, I’m going to help you. Remember, you can use those words as often as you need to. I’d rather have you doing it too much, than not at all. But let’s get you over to this cushion.’

Arden took Efnisien’s water from him and put it down on the small side table nearby. He shifted so that he was a little behind Efnisien, placing a hand at his lower back and pushing at first gently, then more insistently. Efnisien’s first step was hesitant, but once he started, it was easier to walk over, and Arden didn’t break contact once. And then Efnisien was standing in front of the pink cushion and thinking that maybe this was actually really fucking stupid. He knelt.

He wasn’t experienced at kneeling. It wasn’t something he had to do on a regular basis. He wasn’t graceful about it, he needed to put one hand on the couch to balance himself, and muscles in his stomach and hips twinged. He wanted to apologise for not even getting that right, but Arden hadn’t said a word, and he’d maintained contact the entire time. One hand resting between his shoulders.

The cushion was surprisingly comfortable. He thought it would be thin, but it wasn’t. Maybe it was filled with memory foam or something.

‘All the way down,’ Arden said. ‘I want your butt on your heels.’

Efnisien followed the order, then felt embarrassed that he’d responded so quickly, without even thinking.

It was easier to pretend it was just an unusual friendship before. This was something different. It was so obviously _not_ the way they hung out, and Efnisien found himself turning towards Arden’s legs automatically. It wasn’t until he realised how much he wanted to hide his face that he caught himself. He was unexpectedly emotional, and they’d done basically _nothing_. Fucking Isabelle had an easier time listening to Arden than he did.

He was doing worse than a dog. He wasn’t even acting like he wanted to do this. His breathing turned uneven, shallow, and he tried to hide the sound of it, but that just meant it was harder to breathe than before.

Arden’s hand moved from the back of his shoulders, up to the back of his neck, and Efnisien liked that. He liked it when Arden moved two fingertips from the back of his ear to the underside of his jaw.

It took him a beat too long to realise Arden was measuring his pulse. But as he realised, Arden moved his hand away and ruffled Efnisien’s hair.

‘You freak out easy anyway,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘How’re you doing, buttercup? You need to use a word again?’

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said shakily, hating how his voice was higher than normal. He wanted to lie and say that he was doing great. But he didn’t know why he found it so hard, why he kept getting it wrong.

Arden walked around and sat on the couch, and Efnisien suddenly realised the position he was in had him really close to Arden. His leg was right in front of him. Arden sat forwards and looked speculatively at Efnisien, elbow on one of his knees and his chin resting on his hand.

Efnisien looked back, and then shifted a little on the cushion to be the recipient of that gaze, because it was so direct. He wasn’t sore, exactly, but he was aware of the fact that Arden was sitting on the couch and Efnisien was kneeling on the floor. If it wasn’t for the fact that Arden had sat so easily on the floor last time, Efnisien didn’t know if he could’ve gone through with this at all.

‘Tell me something you’re thinking,’ Arden said. His voice was warm, but it was also stern, and Efnisien’s eyes dropped.

‘Uh. Your dog is better at listening to you than I am.’

Arden made a sound that was almost like laughter, and Efnisien’s head bowed further, his shoulders hunched, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Arden thought it was funny. He thought it was a joke, how much Efnisien was fucking up. And this didn’t feel funny at all.

‘No, Ef, look…’ Arden shifted forwards even further. ‘All right, first, you gotta pick a word, sunshine. Now’s the time.’

‘But-’

‘It’s not up for debate,’ he said, and Efnisien pressed his lips together. A flash of something hot and cold inside of him, he couldn’t think, and then Arden’s hand descended onto the top of his head, scratching lightly at his scalp.

‘Yellow,’ Efnisien said weakly. ‘Arden, I’m so sorry. I know I’m ruining it, but-’

His eyes were wide because Arden’s hand was over his mouth. And then Arden leaned down in a way that meant they were making eye contact.

‘Hey, angel,’ he said, smiling a little. ‘There you are. Listen to me, Ef. You said yellow, not blue, so we’re taking a break but we’re not stopping and we’re not talking about it. When I remove my hand, you can say blue if you want, and that’ll be okay. But otherwise you’re going to listen. If I haven’t asked you a question, or if you’re not saying a safeword or asking _me_ a question, you can just keep a lid on this part. I know you’re scared, I know the way you deal with that is to blame yourself. But it’s quiet time now. Unless you have a question or a word for me, okay?’

Efnisien nodded, and thought that Arden’s hands seemed proportionate attached to Arden. But right now, resting over his mouth, Arden’s hand felt huge. It wasn’t rough or mean, it wasn’t even something that would stop him from talking if he wanted to. And yet just resting like that against his cheeks and chin and mouth, Efnisien was paralysed, like Arden had done far more with that touch than just…make it harder to talk.

‘You’re not ruining anything,’ Arden said. ‘Do you think I expected you to be fine with everything out of the gate? Or maybe the better question is this: Did _you_ think you were going to be amazing at this?’

Efnisien stared at Arden for a long time, and then slowly – humiliated – he nodded.

Arden’s smile was a little pained, but it was still real. He reached out with his other hand and grasped Efnisien’s shoulder warmly.

‘Well, angel, I’m going to let you in on a secret. You _are_ amazing at this because you’re willing to try something so crazy-threatening to you. You’re _not_ fine about it, for the same reason. And I like you no matter what. Do you need to stop?’

Efnisien shook his head. He kind of liked…

He couldn’t believe it, but he kind of liked Arden’s hand stopping him from talking. Thoughts of Berdella tickled at the back of his mind, a chasm of fear somewhere in the background, but bizarrely, focusing on Arden’s palm over his lips helped. It felt warm and tingly and a little ticklish. His lips were sensitive.

‘Ah, look at that, you’re being so brave.’ Efnisien’s eyes threatened to prickle at those words, and his throat worked on a swallow.

Arden moved his hand away from Efnisien’s mouth, and then he sat back a little. His fingers moved up to Efnisien’s hair and gently took up a handful of it.

‘Here,’ he said quietly. ‘I want you to rest your head against my thigh. Come on.’

So Efnisien gingerly and lightly rested his head against Arden’s thigh, his back bowing, and then he tensed at the pressure that increased on the top of his head, Arden pushing harder.

‘I didn’t say pretend to rest,’ Arden said. ‘I said _rest.’_

It felt like being picked at when he was already feeling so raw. The sense of failure spiked. In that moment it was tempting to snark back, or say something to indicate how much he didn’t give a shit about this stupid game. How he didn’t care that Arden was noticing all the dumb, shitty little ways that he was fucking up.

It was hard to rest more of his weight against Arden, it didn’t come naturally at all. But Arden murmured soft words of encouragement as he tried, and Efnisien shifted a little to find a more comfortable position, and then the side of his head was warm against Arden’s denim-covered thigh, and a hand was in his hair, idly stroking.

‘Shhh, now,’ Arden said. ‘It’s not so hard, is it, sweetheart?’

No, weirdly. It had been, but it wasn’t now.

Efnisien had a clamour of thoughts in his head, but they weren’t attached to the same terror as before. There was something strangely animal about doing this, Arden using that voice, when he was sure Arden had used that voice with Isabelle. And something demeaning about it, but Arden wasn’t treating him in a demeaning way, except…except he obviously did expect to be obeyed and he had a way of talking which made Efnisien want to turn himself inside out to listen to him.

But Arden’s thigh felt nice and Efnisien could smell a faint hint of expensive cologne, and he felt a mild stretch in the tops of his thighs, and Arden’s hand felt like it cradled his entire head.

Slowly, something settled, his eyes closed. A minute later when Arden didn’t spring anything new on him, his breathing slowed.

Arden hadn’t told him to do anything else, so he didn’t have to do anything else. And Arden had told him to rest, so technically, right now – at least if Arden also thought so – he was doing the right thing.

‘You’re so good for me, sweetheart,’ Arden said, his voice lower than before. Efnisien absently pushed his face closer, and Arden hummed in acknowledgement. ‘You really are. We’re going to spend a few minutes doing this – because this is _very_ nice – and then the next part can begin, okay?’

Next part.

Next part?

Efnisien went to look up to double check he’d heard that right, but Arden’s hand pushed in a way that discouraged him. Efnisien settled again, and Arden laughed. Not the dumb, giggly laugh he had sometimes, but something lower and satisfied that brought a flush of sudden heat to Efnisien’s cheeks.

‘Yeah,’ Arden said quietly. ‘You really are very good, aren’t you?’

Efnisien couldn’t remember a time when someone had called him good for something like this. Crielle sometimes said he was good when he was being mean, and he was good when he was being pretty, and she called him perfect the rest of the time, like a doll. Unexpectedly he felt his chest tighten, and he thought he might cry. The feeling hung like a hook in his heart, it didn’t widen or go anywhere. It was just…there. And if it weren’t for Arden, if the situation were any different, he would have bolted.

‘Hey,’ Arden said, gently nudging at the side of Efnisien’s head. ‘I asked you a question baby. You really are very good, aren’t you?’

‘Am I?’ Efnisien said, his voice choking up. ‘Really?’

Arden didn’t say anything for a moment. Efnisien worried that answering a question with a question counted as talking back and now he’d really fucked up. Arden cleared his throat.

‘You don’t believe me?’ Arden said finally.

‘I really want to,’ Efnisien said, his hands opening and closing on his lap, over and over again. ‘I do. I’m sorry.’

A hand stroking his hair back from his face, the motions repeating slowly and gently, so that it eventually became drugging. The panic receded.

‘Shhh, thanks for answering, sweetheart. You don’t need to apologise. You gave me an honest answer, and that’s the exact right thing to do. Do you like it when I tell you that you’re good?’

Efnisien’s breathing hitched, and he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he whispered.

‘Good,’ Arden said. ‘Because I like it too. All right. Let’s be quiet for a little while. Just having you like this is great.’

A nod of acknowledgement, and Efnisien knew that some ‘next part’ was coming, but for now, his eyes stayed closed and he focused on Arden’s hand in his hair. Efnisien liked this part, and something inside of him was finally falling silent. He didn’t know what it was, or what it’d been saying exactly, but when it went quiescent, he felt a pleasant spaciousness inside of him that made it easier to accept the moment for what it was.


	38. Drugged

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lower back pain has been making my life hellish lately, but writing this story is doing the complete opposite of that. :)
> 
> *
> 
> Tags for this chapter: Non-graphic references to memories of non-consensual drugging.

Efnisien wasn’t sure how much time had gone by when Arden slowly removed his fingers from Efnisien’s hair and rested them on his shoulder instead.

‘You feeling a bit better, sweetheart?’ Arden asked.

Efnisien nodded sleepily, not bothering to lift his head. ‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘That’s great. I’m getting up now, but I’m only going to the kitchen, and then I’ll come right back. You’re going to stay right here, okay? You can lean against the couch if you want.’

‘Mm. Okay, Arden,’ Efnisien said.

He was half-asleep. As Arden rubbed his shoulder a couple more times and slid off the couch, Efnisien kept his eyes closed. He ended up with his head against the couch cushion. He wasn’t really thinking much, which was nice.

As he heard Arden moving about the kitchen, his mind cleared, his forehead furrowed. He took a heavier, deeper breath and his eyes opened. He sat straighter and rubbed at his face. God, why had he gotten so tired? It was still morning.

He looked down at the bit of pink cushion he could see before his knees. He’d felt so threatened by the fact it was pink, but it was a nice shade. It was pale, like the blue of his jumper. He reached down and touched the material, it was soft and nubby, maybe like some kind of artificial suede or something. It felt good to touch, so he left his fingers on it.

The temptation to look over his shoulder and see what Arden was doing was strong, but he’d also figured it out, he wasn’t stupid. Arden was opening and closing the fridge, putting things on the counter. When they’d talked about the form, Arden mentioned handfeeding, and Efnisien said he liked that idea. So it was probably going to be that.

Efnisien examined himself and waited for some kind of panic or shame response, but aside from a vague wariness, nothing came.

He’d wait and find out what it would be like.

Arden returned with a wooden tray with two bowls on it, a straw, two glasses – one containing water, one containing juice. He placed that down beside him on the middle cushion, then sat where he’d been sitting before. He immediately reached out and squeezed Efnisien’s shoulder, and Efnisien blinked up at him in response.

Arden’s smile was sweet. It was so hard to believe he was twenty eight sometimes, when he smiled like that.

‘I had, like, an instinct about this, a while back,’ Arden said, still smiling at him, now stroking the side of Efnisien’s neck with his knuckles. ‘Feels pretty cool to know it was a good instinct. You’ve quietened right down, haven’t you?’

Efnisien nodded, because it was a question, and he was supposed to answer those.

Arden’s smile widened.

‘All right. We’re going to try handfeeding today. You can use your words at any point if you feel afraid. Let me know if kneeling starts to hurt you, and we can shift the position. Finally, I don’t know if you can eat everything I’ve got here, so if I give you a food that you don’t think you can eat, tap my leg twice, okay? Same thing if you’re full. Don’t worry if you can’t eat much, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said, a flicker of fear coming to life.

Food. Food was hard. It was hard to eat in front of other people.

A hand in his hair, and Efnisien thought it was going to be so fucking messy. He didn’t even care.

‘You’re going to do fine,’ Arden said to him. ‘Now… Let’s start with something you like.’

Arden reached into one of the bowls and then – even as Efnisien had warning and knew what was coming – a macadamia brushed against his mouth. Efnisien’s eyes darted to Arden’s, and he almost tried to look at the macadamia, which would be stupid. He didn’t know why he’d never thought about it before, but there was something kind of…super goddamn intimate about being fed by someone. He slammed into that realisation at full force.

He had to resist the urge to reach and grab it from Arden and eat it that way. He had to swallow down the protest that actually, he could eat his damn food without assistance. He was the one who’d agreed to this during their discussion. He was the one who said he liked the idea. But just like with the cushion, it was one more thing so outside of the realm of what normal friendships or relationships looked like, one more thing that reminded him he was broken, there was something wrong with him.

‘Efnisien,’ Arden said, his voice less coaxing than before.

God, Efnisien didn’t like it when Arden got stern. He hated it.

Slowly, he opened his mouth and took the macadamia and tried not to let any part of his mouth touch Arden’s fingers, simultaneously fighting annoyance at himself and the situation.

The macadamia was salty. As he bit into it, its creamy sweetness mingled with the salt and he focused on that instead. The flavour was good. He wondered if Arden bought more for today, or if Arden always had things like this in his house. Macadamias were expensive.

‘Okay,’ Arden said, as though to himself. He reached for something else with his other hand, and then the television turned on. A minute later, a documentary on pottery was playing, the volume low. ‘Rest your head on my leg again, baby. Just like before.’

Efnisien followed the order because it saved him the trouble of having to figure out what was going on. Once more it was hard to relax, and Arden made a point of nudging at the back of his head again until Efnisien tried to find a more comfortable position and rested more of his weight against Arden’s thigh. But he was still tense. He desperately focused on a ceramicist talking about where she sourced her glazes.

A piece of fruit pressed wetly against his mouth. He startled, and Arden hushed him, gently stroking Efnisien’s hair back with his other hand.

After a while, Efnisien opened his mouth and took the bit of fruit with his lips and teeth, chewing slowly. It was kiwi fruit. He hadn’t had that since before Hillview. The old days. It was only three years ago – a bit more now – but his life was never going to be like that again.

The next morsel of food was a walnut, which was easier for Efnisien to take in his teeth.

Arden never spent much time lingering around Efnisien’s mouth. He didn’t touch his lips, though sometimes the piece of food brushed against them. But Arden’s other hand would stroke his hair, or thumb across his temple or the shell of his ear.

The burn of humiliation that came every time Arden presented him with a piece of food didn’t ease. If anything, it got worse.

When Efnisien bit into what turned out to be a piece of mandarin, small and seedless and tart, Arden made a soft crooning noise that made him feel like a child.

‘You’re doing so good, baby.’

_Fucking hell._

This wasn’t easy at all. Efnisien absently kneaded at his own thighs. He felt like a child, or like Arden was secretly laughing at the fact that Efnisien would do this for someone he cared about. Because that was it, wasn’t it? Efnisien would do shit like this for someone he cared about.

It wasn’t like Arden was the one doing it.

Efnisien shivered. When Arden pressed another macadamia against his thinned lips, he kept his mouth closed.

‘Come on, sweetheart,’ Arden coaxed. Efnisien felt something twinge in his chest. Those pet names. Goddamn it. Why did Arden have to use them like that. They came at him like small arrows, over and over again. Like Crielle calling him darling, but somehow _more_ , somehow better. The way he responded to Arden made him feel like he was betraying her. Which was stupid, because god, if she saw him doing this.

_If she saw him…_

He still wouldn’t open his mouth, and he could tell Arden wasn’t happy about it. When Arden sat straighter, Efnisien half-expected he was going to force his lips open and make him eat.

‘You struggling, baby?’ Arden said.

Efnisien nodded automatically. He was both relieved by Arden noticing, and annoyed at himself for constantly doing this.

‘Remember when I said situations like this are a great time to say one of the words? You can do that, can’t you? Nothing bad is going to happen.’

Efnisien thought it over and ducked his head. Again. He was doing this _again._

‘Y-yellow,’ Efnisien whispered, cringing at the fact that he’d said it _three times_ and he was sure some people never had to say it at all.

‘I want to explain something to you,’ Arden said, putting down the macadamia and rubbing Efnisien’s back vigorously instead. The touch was rough enough that it felt grounding, and Efnisien felt the worst of the strange, caught fear abate. ‘I know I’m acting like this is easy, but I know it’s not. It’s challenging to do things like this. Especially for you. You’re demonstrating an immense amount of trust, but you don’t know me very well yet, and you definitely don’t know what to expect right now. I’m so proud that you’re trying so hard for me. You have no idea. But it’s also normal that you’re freaking out, or that you’re having times where it’s just too much, okay?’

Efnisien chewed on the inside of his lip. Was it bad that he liked the reassurance? Shouldn’t he be able to reassure himself? He was an adult, he was a fucking _grown up_ , he should be able to tell himself that he was doing fine.

Doing fine kneeling on the ground like a…like a slave, or…or something.

‘Tell me something that you’re thinking,’ Arden said.

‘This is a mindfuck.’

‘Yeah,’ Arden said. ‘It is. Does it help that I know that, and it’s kind of on purpose? Or does that not help?’

Efnisien laughed in spite of himself, even as Arden drew big circles into his upper back. He felt like a child getting comforted, even though Crielle never touched him like that. Her moments of comfort tended to be hands on his arms, or a pat to his forearm or the top of his head. She’d never been super tactile unless she was kissing him, or she wanted something from him.

‘I think it helps,’ he said.

‘Do you think there’s something wrong with me for liking this?’ Arden said.

‘No.’

‘You could maybe give yourself the same grace there, baby.’

Efnisien looked at Arden’s earnest expression. Efnisien thought it was easy for Arden to say stuff like that, he wasn’t the one kneeling on the floor. But it wasn’t like Arden had forced him to.

That made it harder, though. At least in some ways.

‘Let me ask you another question,’ Arden said. ‘The moments you’ve had of relaxing, of enjoying yourself today, do you think they help balance this out?’

Efnisien nodded.

‘And you like me touching you, don’t you, sunshine?’

Efnisien nodded again, his face creasing. He hated admitting this shit. But if he said no, Arden would get worried or upset, or maybe never touch him again. So he couldn’t lie.

‘I like it too,’ Arden said. ‘Come on, baby. You’ve got this. After this part, we’re done, and then you can relax and take a few days to think about how you feel about all of this.’

That also made it easier, knowing when things were going to end. Maybe he could ask Arden to tell him when they were close, like he just did.

Efnisien stayed kneeling, Arden didn’t encourage him to rest his head again. The show continued to play in the background, and Arden picked up the macadamia nut that Efnisien refused before and brought it back to his lips.

Nothing had changed, but it was easier to take it in his mouth, easier to eat it, even with Arden watching the entire time.

The next piece of food was a cube of cheese, and Efnisien wasn’t sure he could have it. He risked cheese sometimes, but he felt sick pretty consistently because of it. Wincing, he looked apologetically at Arden and tapped his knee twice, as lightly as he could, because even though Arden had given him permission, he didn’t want him to feel threatened by the touch.

Arden only smiled at him and put the cheese down, giving Efnisien another piece of kiwi fruit instead. As Efnisien ate, he felt the fears of before sink down to some hidden, dark place inside. The knots in his shoulders and spine unwound, and he sagged.

The drone of the television in the background was nice. Efnisien listened idly, it was enough to keep his mind occupied. He rocked on his knees and shins a couple of times, which helped the slowly growing strain in his muscles, and then was distracted with a piece of dark chocolate. After that, another slice of mandarin. He liked that so much he thought he might buy some. They weren’t expensive, were they? He had a habit of going to the aisles he knew best in the shops. He rarely explored. He didn’t like seeing all the different options, he didn’t know how other people didn’t get overwhelmed.

Right now – as Arden made all the decisions for him – Efnisien felt a surge of tiredness. He yawned, covering his mouth, then realised he felt kind of spacey. A few minutes after that, everything felt like it was slower and stranger. He accepted the next piece of mandarin – had Arden realised he liked it? How? – and chewed slowly, his eyelids fluttering sleepily.

He knew he was being watched. Arden’s expression was calm, but also satisfied somehow, or pleased, even though he wasn’t smiling. When he looked through the bowls of food, he always moved some around first with his finger, like he was trying to find the perfect morsel.

Another piece of chocolate, and a soft sound escaped Efnisien’s throat before he knew it was going to happen, before he could even stop it. But Arden didn’t seem annoyed, and Efnisien was so far away from his anxiety. He lived in a warm space that felt like static that was spun from gold and light.

‘You like chocolate, huh?’ Arden said, his voice lower. ‘Makes you feel good?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said softly.

It didn’t normally. At least not like this. He liked chocolate, but he almost never got it for himself, and he wasn’t used to having it. Crielle didn’t like him to eat those sorts of things.

As he automatically opened his mouth for a walnut, something niggled at him. Some deep pulse from a place that couldn’t reconcile how he felt with what was happening.

The only thing he could liken this feeling to…

There was only one thing…

Efnisien’s brow furrowed, and then fear snapped into him and he reared back from Arden’s hand and the next piece of chocolate. He had a vision of Arden making the chocolate himself, and putting…putting _stuff_ into it. A premeditated act. Efnisien’s heart raced. He felt cold all over, terror striking him so hard that he reverberated from it.

‘What did you put in it?’ Efnisien said, his voice tremulous. ‘Are you drugging me? Why am I feeling like this? What did you put in the food?’

Arden’s fingers were pinched around the chocolate. He was frozen like he’d been put on pause. It was a horrible expression and Efnisien immediately felt bad. Arden’s eyes were wide, his mouth was open, and Efnisien sucked in another breath to somehow apologise and accuse at the same time, afraid and examining his body for the trace of medicine he hadn’t taken himself.

Arden twitched.

‘Blue,’ he said.

Efnisien stared, then shook his head in growing horror. Arden’s expression was almost the same as the time Efnisien implied he’d inappropriately touched him in the bookshop after he collapsed. The same kind of shock, the same disbelief, and he realised he’d ruined it. Because of some stupid thing that didn’t even apply. Dr Gary was right, he was going to hurt Arden. He’d just done it.

‘Oh my god,’ Efnisien said, his voice coming out in a rush. ‘Oh my god, Arden, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. Of course you didn’t. Of course you wouldn’t do that. I don’t even know why- She didn’t even do that to my food anyway, so I don’t even know why I thought that way. It’s just that I was feeling so good and sleepy, and it just reminded me of- It just- Arden, I’m sorry.’

Arden finally put the piece of chocolate down. Efnisien had an image of him standing up and walking away and putting the tray in the kitchen and then staying quiet as he drove Efnisien home and never speaking to him again.

Efnisien raised his hand to touch Arden’s knee, to beg or reassure or _something,_ then realised he hadn’t asked permission, it wasn’t allowed. He jerked his hand back down again before making contact. He’d made Arden say _blue._

God, why was he like this? _Why?_

‘Hang on,’ Arden said, wiping his fingers on a small napkin. He reached down for Efnisien’s hand. For some reason, Efnisien thought he was going to hurt him for even thinking of touching him. He couldn’t help his cringe, and Arden hesitated, but then still took Efnisien’s wrist in his hand.

Arden drew Efnisien’s hand up to his leg, and rested it there, placing his hand on top of it so it would stay in place. It was exactly where Efnisien had been about to touch him before he pulled back. 

‘Tell me what happened,’ Arden said quietly. ‘Why would you think I’d _drug_ you? Have you been thinking that the entire time?’

‘No!’ Efnisien said, trying to will Arden into believing him. ‘No! Really. Just. I- I was feeling… I got sleepy, and kind of calm, and I felt- And it’s so _stupid_ because it was like before when we’ve done things together and I don’t know why I didn’t think of _that._ But instead it reminded me… It reminded me… I don’t know why. And of course I _know_ \- We don’t have to stop, Arden. Seriously. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.’

Arden’s expression was pained, his thumb moved over the back of Efnisien’s hand, stroking back and forth. If it wasn’t for that, Efnisien had a horrible feeling he would’ve started crying. Which would have made Arden feel guilty. Which was unfair. He needed to pull himself together.

‘What did it remind you of?’ Arden said.

Efnisien looked down. ‘Um. Mama used to- My aunt, Crielle, she used to- And she never actually poisoned my food that way so… It’s not even the same. It’s not the same. But she used to give me medicine sometimes. Like, tablets or pills. And they made me… Like I never had to see a doctor first before she gave them to me. I wasn’t really supposed to see doctors ever. Like we had to be stronger than that, you know. So they were never prescribed, she just…had them.’

Arden’s thumb kept moving on the back of his hand. Efnisien felt nauseated and guilty and bad. He wanted to laugh, but he held it back like someone would hold back a cough. He knew what kind of laugh it’d be. It happened all the time back home. The bad laughing. The kind that never felt okay to do anymore. Some weird broken hysterical thing inside of him.

‘I get why it happened,’ Efnisien said, rubbing his face. ‘But it’s stupid. She never did the stuff that she did to my cousin to me. Because she like… She like _did_ stuff to his food. But she never did that to me. The wires must have crossed. So fucking stupid. I’m sorry, Arden. I was having…’ His voice cracked, and he looked to the television. It was on mute now. He had no idea when Arden did that. ‘I was actually having a good time until my brain did that.’

‘I haven’t decided if we’re stopping for today yet,’ Arden said, and Efnisien’s head whipped back to him, staring at him in surprise. Arden’s smile was wry. ‘I’m still thinking it over.’

‘Oh.’

‘She gave you medicine?’ Arden said, frowning. ‘To change your mood?’

‘Not really my mood, I guess,’ he said. ‘Maybe sometimes. Like, as a kid, if I was really upset, or if I was starting to get…’ His forehead furrowed. He couldn’t quite remember. ‘Sometimes I think I was maybe really hard to control. Or really annoying maybe. But also sometimes just- Like if I couldn’t sleep because I’d had nightmares, she didn’t like her sleep being disturbed, so she’d give me tablets. But some of them- Like one made me feel really sleepy and out of it and just…’

Efnisien stared at the ground.

Fucking hell. Why was he even talking about this? And why did it _matter?_ Why had something that was totally fine when he was a kid make him panic now? It wasn’t like he was the one who got poisoned on purpose. Those pills had always been given to him to help him. They _helped_ him.

‘It was like a switch flicked in my head,’ Efnisien said, ashamed.

‘Maybe you didn’t trust why you felt sleepy or calm,’ Arden said quietly. ‘If it helps, I think you were heading into a state called subspace. I think you’ve come pretty close to it before, or at least been in a shallow version of it. It’s different for different people. Sometimes submitting to someone, or obeying them – even without any physical pain – creates a quietness which can lead to calmness or emptiness or fuzziness or even feeling really good. It can be meditative, or it can make you realise that you’re tired.’

‘And then I ruined it.’

‘No,’ Arden said. ‘But I’m really on the fence about whether we should keep going. It does help knowing that you’ve felt this calm sleepiness around me in the past and not been triggered like this.’

‘I knew as soon as I accused you, that I was thinking about something else. That I’d gotten it wrong,’ Efnisien said, trying to stave off the emotional reaction building in the back of his throat, the back of his head. ‘No wonder you don’t want to keep going. I can’t believe I said that to you.’

‘You were scared, and you felt really vulnerable,’ Arden said softly. ‘And your mother figure gave you tablets based on how she felt at the time, in a way that honestly doesn’t sound that great. Kids shouldn’t be drugged into sleeping after nightmares, Efnisien. They’re meant to be comforted. But you said- She- She _poisoned_ your cousin on purpose?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien muttered. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you that. And she never did it to me. Like sometimes I ate those meals by accident, and once or twice on purpose so my cousin didn’t have to, but like, she never wanted to poison me.’

Arden leaned forwards. His forehead pressed against the side of Efnisien’s head, one of his hands was flat on Efnisien’s back. And he was just there, and close.

‘Be honest,’ Arden said. ‘Do you want to keep going?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Even if just to kind of prove that like- It was a one off. I really, I _really_ know you didn’t do anything to the food. I freaked out.’

‘You sure did, sweetheart. It’s okay. It happens. That’s why we’re doing this slowly, gives us more space to deal with a landmine. And see? I said blue so we could talk about it, and we did. You were really honest with me, baby, that’s so good. You’re so good.’

Efnisien shivered. Words that he probably wasn’t ever supposed to hear, and words he wasn’t sure he deserved, but he needed them so badly.

‘Tell me your words again,’ Arden said, ‘and then we’ll keep going. There’s not much left honestly, before we’re finishing up. Which is probably for the best. And then you can rest and we can watch some baking. You’ve earned that, haven’t you? You’ve worked really hard.’

‘You were the one who cut up all the food,’ Efnisien said.

‘What are your words, sweetheart?’

So Efnisien ran through all of them, faltering a bit over the word blue. He didn’t think Arden would be the first to say it, but he had. But Arden had also made it clear how it worked. It wasn’t a sudden cold stop. Arden didn’t leave. They talked about it. Efnisien didn’t know if he’d always be able to talk about it, but today was easier because he knew he’d been an idiot. Maybe he could talk to Dr Gary about ways to make the past stay in the fucking past where it belonged.

He took a deep breath, and then Arden’s hand coasted over his head, one long stroke like he was petting a dog. The wave of relief that followed – knowing he was allowed to keep going – made him close his eyes.

He was tired. But he wanted to see this through, and he…he wanted Arden to keep feeding him.

Even if he was ashamed of himself for liking it. Even if he felt so embarrassed he kind of wanted to claw his chest open so he could scrape the feeling out of himself.

After a minute, Arden withdrew and picked up a macadamia, and Efnisien stared at him as he took it into his mouth, trying to will him into believing that he wasn’t going to mess up again. He was going to be good. And then he bit down into the macadamia and the taste of it was nice – some were chalky, but these were really tasty – and he realised it was just food. Nothing had been done to it, because Arden wouldn’t do that.

After two more pieces of food – a mandarin slice, and a little tart-sweet, dried cranberry – Arden got the glass of water, put the straw inside it, sipped some himself, then offered the glass to Efnisien.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Have some.’

Efnisien raised his hands automatically, and Arden shook his head, his lips tightening in censure.

 _Oh_. He was supposed to- Efnisien stared at the glass, then looked at Arden again. Arden’s mouth had been on that straw. Surely putting his own lips on it would be suggestive. After everything they’d done today, this felt different.

He leaned forwards and closed the gap, and placed his mouth on the straw, sipping shallowly. He went to lean back, and Arden’s hand grasped the back of his neck, pressure preventing him from moving.

‘Have a bit more,’ Arden said. He made it sound like a suggestion, but the grip Arden had on his neck made it anything but.

Efnisien shivered. He took a few more sips – the glass held in front of him, Arden’s hand keeping him in place. When he stopped, half the water was gone.

‘That’s exactly it, buttercup,’ Arden said, and Efnisien’s eyes closed.

God, he was fucked.

‘You’re taking to this so well,’ Arden purred.

_You can stop now, I’m already dead, thanks._

Arden moved his hand from Efnisien’s neck and took the straw out of the glass. Efnisien felt a small surge of relief, because something about all of that had been tense and charged, and he felt like he was on the precipice of something frightening. He really thought he’d be able to keep a sense of control throughout all of this. Like, on paper, it didn’t look that hard. None of it did.

He stiffened when Arden leaned forwards again, that hand coming to rest firmly on his back, and the glass was there without its straw.

‘Open up, baby,’ Arden said quietly.

The straw had made it easier. Efnisien realised that was why Arden started with it. Because the straw meant Efnisien wouldn’t have sat there worrying about spilling it all over himself as Arden pushed the glass against his mouth, like he was suddenly imagining.

‘My shy little buttercup,’ Arden said, his tone cajoling, but also teasing, ‘come on, now.’

Efnisien’s eyes went from the glass to Arden’s face. The glass was a little less than half-full. He’d have to tilt his head back to drink the water, Arden would have to tip the glass forwards. He tried to think of a time when he’d experienced this as a kid, and he couldn’t. His heart was pounding.

He opened his mouth, and Arden smirked and placed the rim of the glass against his lower lip, and began tilting the glass forward slowly. It gave Efnisien plenty of time to read the angle of the glass and move his head with it so that water wouldn’t tip down his goddamn face. And all the time, it felt like Arden surrounded him, that hand at his back, the cold rim of the glass at his mouth, Arden watching him.

The first bit of water was small, controlled, and Efnisien swallowed the tiny mouthful feeling nervous, like he’d been hooked on a line that he couldn’t escape from.

‘A bit more,’ Arden said.

That turned into a steady flow of water into his mouth, so that Efnisien had to swallow repeatedly. Arden didn’t stop until the water was gone. As soon as he moved his glass away, Efnisien reached up to wipe at his mouth, the water still there, tickling the corners of his lips, beading above his chin.

Arden put the glass down.

‘Open your mouth,’ Arden said, in a way that wasn’t mean or stern, but was unmistakeably an order. And Efnisien opened his mouth without thinking.

A piece of dark chocolate was dropped onto his tongue, Arden’s hand barely touching him.

‘Okay,’ Arden said. ‘Close your mouth, and suck on the chocolate until it’s gone.’

Efnisien liked the clear orders. He found himself looking at Arden, meeting his brown gaze, liking the two little moles next to his right eye. He didn’t move at all, then he shifted his tongue so he could press the chocolate to the roof of his mouth, and he sucked on it lightly. Saliva pooled, hot and wet, and then the bitterness of the chocolate came first, followed by the sweetness as it started to melt.

Arden’s eyes moved, from Efnisien’s eyes, to his lips, to his throat when he swallowed. And Efnisien knew that Arden was aroused from that alone and the heaviness in his lidded gaze. There was a corresponding acknowledgement that thrummed in his body. Not arousal, but some balance between them, the sense that he was on one side of the scale and Arden was on the other, and in this moment, they were balanced and staring across the fulcrum.

The chocolate took some time to disappear, and then all at once it seemed to vanish in the space of thirty seconds, the flavour and the feel of it seeking every corner of him. Clinging to the roof of his mouth, the bitterness at the back of his molars, the sweetness at the front of his tongue, behind his teeth. And then because he couldn’t help it, he chased the taste of it with his tongue, and Arden watched him like a hawk.

Efnisien thought the connection between them would break, but it didn’t. Arden smiled at him, and Efnisien felt bright and strange, like the sun was holding him in high regard.

He held perfectly still when both of Arden’s hands cupped the sides of his face, and he thought Crielle used to take his face in her hands like this too. Arden kissed the top of his head, and Crielle used to do that too.

But Arden stayed, his hands gathering up the big blond curls left behind by the hairdresser, his breath hot against the top of Efnisien’s head.

‘Thank you,’ he said. He sounded almost reverent.

Efnisien wanted to respond, but it hadn’t been a question. It wasn’t like he had much language available anyway. He felt like power cords had been disconnected from their sockets in his mind. Machines that constantly ran interference were…quiet. He knew he was alert. He knew he’d never forget this moment. But everything was so simple.

When Arden leaned back, he quietly fussed with the tray, and Efnisien kept watching him, waiting.

And then Arden stopped and considered Efnisien quietly. He smiled and scooted forwards on the couch until he was standing. He knelt easily by Efnisien’s side, which made him shorter again. Arden still felt like a giant in the room.

‘All right, sweetheart. We’re done for today, but you don’t have to be in any rush to start making sense of things yet, okay?’

Efnisien thought everything made sense, actually, but he nodded.

‘You remember how to stand?’

_Oh. Standing._

He shrugged.

Arden laughed quietly and stood, then held his hand out in a way that made it clear that he intended on helping Efnisien up. So he took it because it was one more simple thing.

Standing was _not_ simple. He made a soft, choked noise when he realised how much his legs had stiffened and Arden caught him easily at the waist as Efnisien shifted from foot to foot, wincing and feeling like standing was maybe too much.

‘Ah, I’m sorry,’ Arden said. ‘That’s my fault. It was too long, you’re not used to it. Here, sit down on the couch for me so you can get your legs into a more comfortable position.’

Efnisien sat on the couch by the wooden tray with the food on it, and when Arden told him to slowly work on raising each leg and then lowering them slowly, Efnisien did that too. Arden whisked the tray away, and Efnisien watched him. He was full, but he didn’t remember feeling full while he’d been eating.

His legs stopped speaking to him in strained voices and settled. He watched Isabelle sleeping instead. He’d forgotten about her. He’d sort of forgotten about the lounge and the kitchen. This whole space felt huge, even though it was just walls, doors and windows. It felt like one of the biggest spaces he’d ever visited.

When Arden returned, he sat in the same place as before. He reached out and coaxed Efnisien onto the couch, so that he was lying facing the television, head against Arden’s thigh. He wiggled absently until he was more comfortable, then flexed his feet back and forth which helped his calves feel better. There. His legs were back to normal now. They might ache the next day, but that was fine. It would only be Monday.

Arden turned on _The Great British Bake Off,_ and Efnisien watched as much as he could as tiredness pushed at him.

Surely it would be rude to sleep.

And then twenty minutes later, when Efnisien’s eyelids kept sinking down and he had to keep fighting to keep his eyes open, Arden stroked his hair and hushed him and told him to sleep if he wanted to.

‘You’ll feel a bit more with it when you wake up,’ Arden said softly. ‘But I think you need the rest, sweetheart. It’s been such a hard week for you anyway, remember? Don’t think I’ve ever seen you so quiet.’

Efnisien felt completely ‘with it.’ Just…everything was simple. He didn’t need to complicate it with words.

He fell asleep thinking that Nadiya was his favourite baker, Isabelle was his favourite dog, and Arden was his favourite person.

*

When he woke, he felt muzzy. Another show was playing on the television, some anime – he only knew what it was because of the subtitles and the language – he’d never actually watched one before. He stared at it in confusion, then shifted until he could look up at Arden.

‘You didn’t miss much of _Bake Off_ ,’ Arden said. ‘I didn’t want you to miss a whole episode, so I switched. You’ve been asleep for about forty five minutes. How do you feel?’

‘Foggy,’ he said.

‘That happens sometimes. Are your legs sore?’

Efnisien shook his head.

‘You know, baby, you don’t have to follow the rules anymore. You can say whatever you want.’

Efnisien liked the rules, but that wasn’t the issue. ‘Just…don’t have much to say.’

‘Can I talk? Can I ask you questions?’

‘Yep, as long as you don’t mind if the answers are whatever pureed version my brain comes up with.’

Arden laughed, that stupid dorky laugh, the one that Efnisien liked now. He used to hate it. Now he heard it and felt some stupid thing light up inside of him, like…that was _the_ laugh, and he’d made Arden make that sound, and that was a nice thing.

‘I don’t mind at all,’ he said. ‘Firstly, we’re gonna talk about everything that happened today and how you felt about it and what you liked and what you didn’t in a few days. I don’t want to do it today. You seem like you’re in the kind of mood where you’re going to say you liked all of it.’

Efnisien raised his thumb to indicate that yes, actually, he agreed.

‘Except how you _didn’t,’_ Arden said, laughing. ‘So we’ll leave that for when you’re basically conscious.’

‘Roger that, Mercury,’ Efnisien said.

‘Oh my god.’ Arden definitely didn’t seem like he was going to stop doing some version of laughing any time soon. Right now it was kind of a chuckle. Efnisien wriggled again so that he was more comfortable and watched what looked like ten year olds face off against a really angry looking dude. A few seconds later the dude picked up one of the kids and threw them off into the distance.

‘He needs anger management,’ Efnisien said, pointing at the television.

‘Yeah. He’s a supervillain, he probably does.’

‘I’m a supervillain.’

‘You’re not, baby,’ Arden said, the humour vanishing from his voice. ‘You’re not a supervillain. You’re just you. A person.’

‘That’s what Dr Gary says,’ Efnisien said, closing his eyes. ‘So boring.’

‘Yeah,’ Arden said. ‘Sometimes it is boring. Sometimes it’s really intense. Sometimes it’s painful and sometimes it’s fun. That’s what it is to be a person, angel. You’re pretty good at it, you know, being a person.’

‘I was raised to be good at pretending.’

‘Yeah,’ Arden said, stroking Efnisien’s hair tenderly. ‘Maybe. But you’re really transparent sometimes. Ef, even humans pretend, and they’re still human. Pretending doesn’t make you exempt, sweetheart.’

‘Does that mean Crielle’s human, too?’

Efnisien was still watching the anime, but it didn’t make any sense. There was a lot of fighting, a lot of yelling. Eventually he turned around completely so that he was curled into Arden’s side, his knees up against the back of the couch. Arden was still petting him, stroking him like a cat, or some other animal.

He thought he’d feel less awful all the time if people petted him sometimes. Maybe someone should have told Crielle that petting could be nice.

‘Yeah,’ Arden said finally. He sounded sad. ‘Yeah, it does.’

Efnisien’s eyes were closed and he was going to fall asleep again. He didn’t bother fighting it. Arden would tell him if it was bad.

‘God,’ Arden said, his voice coming from a distance. ‘You’re so fucking wiped, Ef. Are you always this tired?’

‘Kinda,’ Efnisien said. ‘Are you mad?’

‘No. No, baby, I’m not mad. You want to go lie down in a proper bed? Or are you okay here while I watch TV for a bit?’

‘M’good,’ Efnisien managed. ‘Want this part.’

‘Yeah?’

Efnisien wanted to say that it was good, it was nice, but the words eluded him. He’d wake up again later and apologise and spend the rest of the day with Arden, and he was looking forward to that like he used to look forward to…

Well…

He didn’t know if he’d ever looked forward to anything like that, before. The sooner he slept, the sooner he’d get there, so he slept as Arden absently petted him. Efnisien didn’t even mind the screamy show playing in the background. 


	39. Post-Mortem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chonky boi. Also a warning again in this chapter for a memory involving the non-prescription drugging of (and momentary violence against) a distressed minor.

Monday was quiet. It wasn’t only that the day itself was made up of audio transcription – and giving serious thought to quitting doing surveillance for the data company – but everything in Efnisien’s mind was simpler. It was easier to live in the present. He added a little bit of sugar to his porridge. He looked at his bank account and finally ordered a satchel that would fit a water bottle in it, and then he ordered a water bottle, and then left his bank account alone.

He got a text that night from Arden.

_Hey, babe. Checking in – how’re you feeling after yesterday?_

_Good,_ Efnisien wrote. And then he sent a black heart – which used to belong only to Gwyn – and he pressed his lips together because he didn’t really send Arden emojis, but it was also hard not to.

 _That’s GREAT,_ Arden sent back. _Just, if anything changes, and it feels weirder than normal, get in touch, okay? Heyyyyyy, also, you want me to come over to yours Thursday morning? I got a whole morning and I want to put your name in my calendar so I can tell everyone else that I can’t see them because I’m busy._

Efnisien rocked back and forth on his hips, then eventually replied that yes, actually, he would like to see Arden on Thursday, but that he had therapy in the afternoon. Even that felt simple. Later, he reread one of his books on deep sea creatures and closed his eyes and fell asleep imagining Stupidhead doing his little bobbing dance, up and down, side to side.

*

Tuesday was strange. Efnisien entered a weird place where he was aware things were uneasy and a bit unpleasant, but he didn’t feel _bad_ exactly. He had a few intrusive thoughts, but no more than usual, and definitely less than he was having a few months ago. He made tallies on the whiteboard. He found a piece of notepaper and wrote:

_Hallucinations  
Lludd  
Medicine  
Dumb fucking past_

He shoved that into his wallet, so he’d remember to bring it up when he saw Dr Gary. Normally he was happy to talk about whatever, but he wanted to stop hallucinating shit that never happened, and he didn’t know if he needed anti-psychotics or something. He didn’t want to turn into someone even crazier. Arden deserved better.

Every now and then he’d think about what it felt like to kneel on that cushion. He’d imagine kneeling, and sometimes he looked around his apartment for somewhere to kneel. But there was no one to kneel for, and his apartment was…so fucking drab.

He wanted to go to the bookshop, and he _was_ getting better about going out, but he didn’t want to go walk that direction again any time soon. He could feel thunder in his chest when he thought about it, a rumbling that meant he wasn’t ready, even if he was getting better at getting groceries.

When he drank a glass of water, he thought of Arden’s hands around the glass, tipping it forward. When he ate a walnut, he thought of Arden holding one against his mouth.

That night he found himself on a deep downward spiral, a rabbit hole of looking up Wikipedia articles about the kinds of people that ended up isolated and falling in love with serial killers. The passive idiots who married them, who helped them, who became accomplices, who were too weak to stand up for themselves. Who always seemed hapless and shocked that they ended up in jail too, going from the control of one person to the control of the state.

Efnisien brought the piece of paper out of his pocket and added: _Weak!!!_

He stared into space and wished he could tell if he was being paranoid or not paranoid enough.

Eventually he also added: _Mika._

He rubbed his face hard, the heels of his hands digging into his forehead. That night he had cup noodles for dinner and stared in his fridge and thought maybe he should try buying fresh food or something. Even if he couldn’t really use his stovetop because fire was so _tempting,_ he could eat like…snow peas raw. And carrots. Couldn’t he?

He went to bed feeling like reality had hooked him on a line, dragging him back into all the things he hated about his life.

*

That night, a memory folded itself up and inserted itself into the place a dream or nightmare would normally be:

_He was little. Nine? Ten? Was that little? He was Crielle’s little man. Men weren’t children. And she kissed him, with tongue sometimes, and she told him that was only for adults and very special little men. That was him._

_So he wasn’t little._

_Yet he stood by her bedroom door – she didn’t share a bed with Lludd – and was too scared to go in there, gasping hoarsely, his stomach cramping, his fist knuckled into his bellybutton._

_He stood there for long minutes, terrified of waking her, terrified of going back to bed. He couldn’t go to Gwyn, because Gwyn would be scared too and then that would be too much fear. He didn’t want that. He couldn’t go to anyone else. The maids didn’t like him. Only Crielle._

_But sometimes it was really bad to bother her, and she cared a lot about her sleep._

_He stood there hoping the pain and the fear and the cramps would go away, sleep-mussed and trying to wait out his own increasing terror. He wanted to go to her bed and crawl in, but he wasn’t allowed. He wasn’t meant to wake her up. He was a little man now. He couldn’t just do those things anymore._

_There was no one else he could go to._

_His hand clenched and unclenched on the doorframe over and over again. He wished more than anything that she would wake up, she would lift the covers and he could run into the bed and she would kiss him on the mouth and tell him he was lovely and pretty and he could hide in there and be protected by her._

_But he wasn’t little anymore._

_‘Mama?’ he whispered when he couldn’t bear it anymore._

_He crept closer into the room and then stopped, paralysed, whimpering softly as he looked around at all the dark shadows where terrible images lurked. All his nightmares followed him into wakefulness, and sometimes he couldn’t tell the difference. He saw the most horrible things, and she loved it. She told him to embrace it. But he didn’t want to see them. He was scared._

_His eyes prickled and he dashed at them repeatedly, until it was impossible to hide the fact that he was simply crying. He cried quietly because he’d learned how. He was too scared to move._

_‘Mama?’ he whispered; his voice even quieter than before._

_He should go back to bed. That was the right thing to do, that was what a little man would do. He was Efnisien ap Wledig, he was the little man of the house and he had to make her proud._

_The way the sun shone off her hair, convincing him that she was an avenging angel, and the way her eyes were so blue like pictures of oceans in books. The way she put her foundation on in the mornings when she let him watch, and the way she did her makeup with delicate efficiency. The way she blotted her lipstick perfectly and he wanted to steal the tissue she used, and sometimes he did. He loved everything about her._

_Now it was dark. The only light came from the large window, and it was dark outside too. Everything was gloom. She was just a lump in the bed._

_Efnisien had seen photos of dead people left in beds by killers. She could be dead. Someone could’ve killed her. Berdella or someone could’ve killed her._

_He hiccupped a quavering sound of fear and took another shaking step forward, and then sank down to his knees. No. No he couldn’t wake her up. What if she was dead? What if she was dead? What if the person who killed her was still here? What if they were watching him? What if they were enjoying his fear? That was what people did._

_He was stuck in a paroxysm of indecision. She was strong and lethal enough to stop anyone from ever hurting her. But she could be dead. She was just a lump in a bed._

_‘Mama.’ His voice was almost silent, but there was a high whistle in the back of it, like he’d be wailing if he were allowed._

Mama please please wake up Mama please wake up and be alive and kiss me please please please please please

_He almost went to Gwyn’s room. He could sit in there quietly. Maybe he could put a nightlight on. But Gwyn didn’t sleep with a nightlight. Gwyn once said he knew who all his monsters were and so he wasn’t afraid of any others. And he’d said it imperiously, while looking down his nose at Efnisien, and Efnisien had snapped and launched at him and yanked his hair until strands came out and Gwyn screamed at him and smacked him in the face and they’d been on top of each other and yelling angry, meaningless noises. The maid had separated them and Crielle had gotten mad at Efnisien for being clumsy instead of calculated with his anger._

_But Gwyn wasn’t afraid of monsters under beds and he wasn’t afraid of anyone except for Efnisien, Crielle and Lludd. If Efnisien was in that room, maybe he could borrow some of that, and not think there were killers hiding in the shadows._

_But what if Gwyn was a lump in a bed too?_

_What if he went in there, and Gwyn was just a lump? What if Efnisien pulled back the covers, and the bed was black with blood? That was how it looked sometimes in the photos if the lights weren’t on properly. All the blood looked black and inky and bad._

_His tears dripped rapidly, his bladder clenched, and he whimpered in fear because no, he couldn’t do that either. It wasn’t allowed._

_He placed his arms over his head and hated himself for crying. He tried to stay silent and cried from fear and loneliness._

_He didn’t know how much time passed when he heard a shifting in the bed and felt a lightning strike of hope and terror at the same time._

_‘Efnisien?’ Crielle said sleepily. ‘Is that you?’_

‘Mama,’ _he cried, his voice breaking on a wretched sob. He kept trying to choke them down because he wasn’t supposed to be this. He really wasn’t. He was breaking all of the rules. He was supposed to smile and be sunny and bright and mean and bad. He was meant to laugh and be what she needed him to be._

_She made a sound of exasperation and he shrank in on himself, shoving his fingers into his mouth, trying to get himself to stop making noises, like he could scoop them away and hide them in the fibres of the carpet._

_The lamp flared on, and she was swinging her legs over the bed, and the long shimmery nightgown she slept in clung to her as she got up and walked towards him._

_She crouched by his side and drew him up, and he thought she was pulling him in for a hug and he lurched into her without being able to help himself, and she held him back at arm’s length with an unforgiving grip._

_‘No, no, no,’ she said, her voice sleepy and sweet. ‘This won’t do, my darling. This simply won’t do. We’ve talked about this.’_

_‘I was so scared!’ The words splintered out of him, and she stared at him, expressionless. ‘I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I know it’s bad.’_

_The slap, when it came, didn’t make a huge sound. It didn’t crack against the side of his face like an explosion, but it felt like one all the same. His head was flung to the side and she’d grabbed him cruelly by the shoulder with her other hand, so he wouldn’t fall._

_‘Stop this,’ she said, her voice still warm and sweet. ‘Efnisien, this is unbecoming. You’re being a little animal. And you know what happens to little animals, don’t you? You know better than anyone. Now, you’re going to pull yourself together, stop crying, and speak to me calmly, or I’m going to get angry with you.’_

_His whole body clenched up. He hated when she was angry with him. There was her being annoyed or irritated, and then her anger, which unmade him. He wanted to cry even harder, but he knew he couldn’t. With a force of will that made him feel like he was turning inside out, he forced himself to stop crying. He sniffled a few times, wiped at his nose, and tried to calm his breathing. She wasn’t happy with him, but she wasn’t dead either. He wouldn’t cry._

_‘Now,’ she said, not letting go of his shoulder. Her nails were hurting him. ‘What’s wrong?’_

_‘I’m scared,’ he said._

_‘That’s not an answer, little animal,’ she said, shaking him where she gripped him. ‘That’s a feeling. It means nothing to me. What’s_ wrong?’

_She wasn’t properly angry, not yet, but she was closer than before. Her voice had that snap in it._

_‘My stomach hurts,’ he managed._

_What was wrong? He wanted to curl up in her bed. He was lonely. He thought she was dead or murdered or butchered or bloody. He thought she’d look like one of the animals he’d hurt. He woke from a nightmare and he didn’t want to hurt anything and he didn’t understand why. He woke from a nightmare where he had a dog and it was called Cody and it was nice and soft and warm and then it was tortured and dead. He wanted her to be nice to him. He wanted her to call him perfect and special and beautiful. His cheek stung. His bladder was sore. He needed to go to the toilet. He was scared. He felt sick._

_‘Where does it hurt?’ she said sharply._

_He gestured to his bellybutton, and then all around, and she didn’t say anything for a minute._

_‘This needs to stop happening,’ she said._

_That scared him too. He hardly told her how often his stomach hurt._

_‘Efnisien, you’re not a child anymore. You have everything you could possibly wish for. You have a beautiful, large bedroom. You have more toys than anyone could imagine having. You have access to the best school. You have protection for all of your evil monstrousness and someone who still loves you in spite of what you are. You have my regard – and you are treating it very poorly tonight indeed – and you have a bright future ahead of you. I don’t want to be disappointed in you, but I am. Now, I’m going to give you some medicine for your stomach, and you’re going to go back to bed.’_

Can’t I stay with you?

_He was too scared to ask. He only got to do that if he did the things he was supposed to do. He only got to do that if he hurt someone, if he hurt an animal. His head was pounding. He was still having to fight with himself not to start crying again. He wished he could find the part of him that liked being mean and awful._

_She let him go and left him there on the floor, then went off into her bathroom. The light was too bright, and as he blinked rapidly, he made himself stand and wiped at his face with his pyjamas. He was going to be strong and he was going to behave. Not a little animal, but a little man. It was fine. He was embarrassing himself; he was embarrassing her. He wasn’t a child anymore._

_She came back with a glass of water and some tablets. He knew the small white one would make him fall asleep really fast. He didn’t like swallowing pills, but he had no choice. Crielle made him learn._

_‘I’m sorry, Mama,’ he said, his voice calmer than before. ‘I know your sleep is important.’_

_‘It is,’ she said. ‘But sorry doesn’t mean anything. Next time think before waking me. I love you so very much, my darling, but you do wear on my patience at times. There, your poor cheek, I didn’t slap you very hard, did I?’_

_‘No, Mama,’ he said quietly. She was touching his cheek and it took all his energy not to lean into the touch and close his eyes. He thought some superheroes lifted buildings, but he wasn’t a superhero, because he needed all of his powers to not lean into her hand, and because he didn’t do anything good anyway. He was her little villain, too._

_‘You were hysterical,’ she said. ‘It’s ugly and unsightly, emotions like that. All of that is for the people you hurt, not for people like us. Darling, no one else wants you. Not your parents, not anyone else. You have to be smarter about how you come to me. I am not an ocean that can give endlessly, I am a well, and I don’t want you to bleed me dry. All these little episodes of yours, really now, what were you thinking?’_

_‘I’m really sorry, Mama.’_

_‘Stop it. Well, I suppose I can’t expect better from you when you’re so overwrought. Come on now, take the tablets.’_

_He wanted to ask what they did, and he thought of what she put in Gwyn’s food sometimes, but he didn’t say a word. Silently he took the tablets one by one, drinking water each time. Not too much, because he didn’t want the water to run out. He knew she wouldn’t go back and get more water for him if he ran out, and he choked without the water. He didn’t like chewing them. They were bitter. When he was done, she smiled at him._

_‘There we are,’ she said. ‘You can do something right after all, can’t you?’_

_‘I love you, Mama,’ he said. ‘More than anyone in the whole world.’_

_‘I know,’ she said, petting him lightly on the cheek she’d smacked. ‘As you should. I love you too, my darling, you’re such a sweet boy, you’re just regressing a little bit. But we must grow forwards, not backwards. I’m only trying to help you.’_

_‘Thank you, Mama.’_

_‘All right now. Go back to bed, one of those tablets is going to work fast, you remember, don’t you? Make sure you go to the bathroom first. I don’t want the maid having to deal with you wetting the bed again. My sweet little angel, run along now.’_

_He nodded and left her room quickly, and then ran down the dark hallway back to his room, which felt like it was so far from hers. He went to his bathroom first, already feeling foggy, and he was yawning by the time he crawled into bed._

_He fell asleep with his hand over the place where his cheek still stung, head empty, nothing more than shadows left behind._

*

He woke feeling odd. He lay there in the dark and stared up at the ceiling for a long time. It wasn’t a nightmare, and it wasn’t a dream. It was a memory. He didn’t think it was a flashback, but he didn’t know. Maybe he could talk to Dr Gary about it.

But it didn’t seem important.

It was just something parents did when they cared for their children.

He found himself missing her, even though his hand rested absently on the cheek she’d struck. But he missed the sound of her voice, and he missed her hands and her fingers and the cold tips of her fingernails. He missed the way she called him darling and he missed the way she’d get him the drink of water whenever she gave him pills.

So it wasn’t a bad dream at all.

But it took him a long time to find sleep again.

*

Wednesday. Choir practice. Efnisien kept himself busy during the day but the dread built anyway. He practiced singing, but he knew he wouldn’t sing strongly during choir. He almost hoped Anthony would send him away and tell him to join another group.

He spent as much time navigating intrusive thoughts as he did his thoughts around the choir, and by the time he left his house to walk there, the whiteboard was full of tallies. Efnisien wanted to frisbee it across the room at one point, but stopped himself, annoyed at how agitated he was that Bridge knew the _truth._ It wasn’t like anyone had hurt him. Even if Dr Gary did say it was a wound. No. It didn’t work that way.

He had to pull his shit together, goddamn it.

At rehearsal, he waited in the toilets again. At one point, Nate and Janusz came in, the depressed one and the cheerful one. Janusz kept up a stream of friendly chatter, and Efnisien only knew Nate was there when he said:

‘Yeah, I like that place too.’

Efnisien’s eyebrows rose. He didn’t know Nate was capable of liking _anything._

But they left after a while and then it was time to sing, and he walked in and went to the chair that he now thought of as his, and he nodded when Janusz beamed at him, and ignored the way Nate stared at the side of his head.

He sang shakily at first. He couldn’t find that feeling of unity, constantly worrying he was a beat behind or a beat ahead because of it. But no, he seemed to be singing okay, and Anthony wasn’t singling him out or anything, and he could hear Bridge’s voice, strong and good without dominating the choir.

Efnisien closed his eyes at the end and thought he’d done it. He’d done what Dr Gary told him to do, and now he could find another group and wait on tenterhooks to fuck things up with that one too. This was how it was going to be. He could never erase what he’d done. He wasn’t even supposed to be in groups in the first place. He wished Dr Gary would believe him.

He left quickly, and simply held up a hand in a wave when Anthony said: ‘Oh, you’re leaving already? Efnisien, I was wondering if-’

And then he was outside. He stood at the base of the steps and breathed rapidly, clutching his sheet music to his chest, and telling himself it was fine. It was fine.

He turned and looked back. He couldn’t move when he saw Bridge standing there in the doorway all the way up the stone steps, backlit by the old theatre hall, staring at him. Her face was in shadow, he couldn’t read her expression. She’d had to have followed him quickly, because she’d been talking to the others when he walked out.

They stared at each other for a long time, and he half-expected her to shout at him to never come back. He almost asked if she wanted him to stop coming. But she’d told him they shouldn’t talk anymore, so it would be wrong if he started that conversation.

Eventually she went back inside, and Efnisien turned and walked home.

That night he imagined tearing Stupidhead apart, over and over. He stood in the shower and gasped and pulled at his hair, trying to get himself to _stop,_ but the thoughts kept coming. And he thought maybe that’s what he wanted to do to Bridge, which made no fucking sense, and he didn’t want to hurt her, and he’d already hurt her enough, he just wanted to _stop._ It wasn’t until he fell asleep – undressed, his hair soaking wet on the pillow – that he realised dimly that he probably wanted to tear himself apart, and Stupidhead was the next best thing.

*

He woke wretchedly early at four in the morning to stomach cramps rippling through him. As he sat exhausted on the toilet, half-falling asleep – something he knew all too well from far too many mornings like this – he poked around in his head to see if Stupidhead was still there.

He was. Just floating around. Like nothing had happened.

Efnisien revisited the thought that maybe he wanted to hurt Bridge for her rejection. He felt revolted even considering it, and he wanted to be relieved by that, but what if revulsion was hiding some deeper desire he wasn’t aware of? What if all the things he didn’t want to do were just…surface feelings? And they weren’t real at all?

What if he convinced himself he was doing better, or less likely to hurt someone, and then he snapped through the surface of himself into the truth?

His stomach didn’t give him a reprieve until close to six am. The waves of cramps left him yawning, his stomach tender and sore. He went back to bed and slumped into a fetal position, leaving several alarms for himself on his phone.

An hour later his alarm chirped at him and he got up feeling like he could have slept for the rest of the day. He sipped warm water, skipped breakfast to be on the safe side, and showered, then spent far too long staring at his curls and twisting them into shape with his hands. He didn’t used to care about stuff like that during Hillview. But Arden had made him start caring again. Just a little.

At ten, he waited on the curb for Arden’s car, then frowned when he saw Arden walking towards him from the carpark nearby.

‘I didn’t know if you had any visitor’s parking in the building,’ Arden said.

‘Wait- Are we…?’ Efnisien looked back at his apartment in horror. He mentally scanned the text messages they’d sent to each other and realised Arden had said he wanted to come over to Efnisien’s. He’d just taken that to mean he’d be getting picked up like normal, but Arden’s wording had been different to previous times.

‘Oh,’ Arden said, looking back in the direction of his car. ‘Did you not want to? I kind of wanted to see your apartment. We can go back to mine if you want?’

‘My apartment’s crappy,’ Efnisien said.

‘I mean you’ll be in it,’ Arden said, grinning at him. ‘So it can’t be that bad, right? Plus, hey- Me coming over like this means I can hug you hello _right now,_ instead of waiting until we get back to mine.’

Efnisien started to respond, and Arden was already in his space, arms wrapping around him. Efnisien stared at the street past Arden and wondered what people would think, and then he didn’t care anymore because those fingers were digging in possessively. He’d noticed that Arden did that more and more, his grip tight, and the fingers squeezing in.

It made Efnisien feel like he kind of belonged to someone, and he didn’t know exactly what to do with that. His brain screeched to a halt.

‘You feel good,’ Arden said, pressing closer.

‘It’s too early for you to…break my brain, Arden,’ Efnisien said, pressing his lips together. ‘This isn’t fair.’

‘Says you, sweetheart, looking as good as you do. That’s not fair either.’

Efnisien shook his head and realised that the line that separated friendship from relationship was right now far clearer than he’d thought. It had been grey and fuzzy at first, and now he knew he was here, in a relationship. Even as his stomach still ached, even though he was still tired, for the first time that morning he felt somewhat settled.

‘Okay, you can see my crappy apartment,’ Efnisien said. ‘But like- You can’t… You can’t make fun of it.’

‘You should’ve seen the house we grew up in,’ Arden said, laughing softly.

He stepped away, but not far enough that he couldn’t keep a hand on Efnisien’s lower back, as Efnisien turned and walked back to the building. He took his keys out of his pocket and tried not to fidget. He focused on his steps so that he didn’t accidentally bump into Arden.

Efnisien thought they’d make conversation, but Arden seemed happy looking around. So instead, he focused on the elevator ride and then walking down the corridor. He unlocked the door and let Arden go in first. His apartment was clean, because it was always clean, but it was also dim, grey, old, and made with cheap materials.

‘Uh,’ Efnisien said, closing the door behind him and locking it. ‘So this is basically it. It’s a one bedroom. And then like, you’re standing in the rest of the house.’

‘Oh my god,’ Arden said, after his eyes had darted everywhere. ‘You _did_ arrange the books by colour. That looks so great.’

He slung his backpack off his shoulder and dumped it on the couch like he came over all the time, and walked over to the books.

‘Ah, I see,’ Arden said. ‘You’ve got a pretty eclectic mix here. It really is all non-fiction. You really- Do you not read fiction ever?’ Arden said, looking back to Efnisien curiously.

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t. I’ve never found it that relatable. Like, as a kid, it always seemed to be about the kind of people I was meant to be hurting. And the people that were doing the hurting always had bad endings.’

‘Makes sense,’ Arden said, like it did, like it wasn’t fucking evil. Then he turned to his backpack and unzipped it. ‘Actually, that reminds me. I brought some books from the shop. I know it’s not as good as you coming in, but this way you can still read new stuff! I thought you could sign up for an online membership at our store, and then purchase the book you want. I even made you a discount code so you’d always get free shipping, that way you’re paying exactly the same as if you bought it in store, right? That’d work, wouldn’t it? Here, look.’

Arden carried three books to the table and spread them out. Efnisien stood next to him, looking at the titles. One was on sea meadows and the animals that lived in them, with a dugong on the cover. One book was on astrobiology and had a really cool, neon green cover. The last book was on space junk, and had a picture of a round metal orb on the cover, with really long metal spokes coming out of it.

Efnisien kind of wanted them all. He looked at the prices on the back and put the astrobiology one down, and held up the other two.

‘Can I get these?’

‘Yeah,’ Arden said. ‘Man, you really will read any non-fiction, won’t you? Why don’t you get a library membership?’

‘What?’ Efnisien said, staring at him.

‘You know, the local library? It’s pretty close to you! And then you could take out as much as you wanted – just about, anyway – and they’re super generous with the time you can keep them, and they stopped charging return fees like two years ago. Also they have a whole database online so you can order in what you like. If you did it that way, you could get me to order in the ones you _really_ liked, and read a ton. I think they even offer a delivery service… Um. Don’t quote me on that. I think that was like a year ago.’

Efnisien was struggling to process the words. A library? He knew about his school library, but he’d never been encouraged to go to one otherwise. Thinking about it, he couldn’t even recall Crielle’s opinion on them. Maybe that they were for poor people? He couldn’t remember.

‘Anyway,’ Arden said, putting the astrobiology book in his backpack. ‘If you want to go to our website, I’ll walk you through signing up.’

‘Is the library really that close?’

‘Sure,’ Arden said, laughing. Efnisien sat down at his desktop. The screen woke and showed some of his audio transcription text that he wanted to edit before sending it off. ‘I’ll text you the address.’

Buying the books was easy. Efnisien’s code for free shipping was simply his name, and Arden told him he could search the site any time he wanted, purchase the books, and Arden would bring them. The guilt Efnisien felt at not being able to visit the shop – at least for now – receded, and he kept the tab of the bookshop open even as he pushed away from the desk.

‘Come sit with me,’ Arden said, practically bouncing over and flopping down onto the couch. He dropped his backpack on the floor once he’d grabbed his tablet. He patted the couch and Efnisien hesitated.

‘Um, do you want-? Do you want some water or anything? I don’t really have much…much food. But like, if you want-’

‘I’m good!’ Arden said. ‘Come on!’

Efnisien chewed on the inside of his lip as he walked over. Crielle would have had so many things for guests. Different types of coffee, different types of tea, and then there was the wine cellar and Lludd’s snug where he kept his spirits. The freshly squeezed juices, the different types of water. That didn’t even begin to cover the food…

He sat on the couch and Arden slung his ankles onto Efnisien’s thigh while he leaned back against the opposite armrest and opened up his tablet.

‘So today we’re kind of going to debrief a bit, at least for a few minutes,’ Arden said. ‘Think of it as a post-mortem of the scene, but then I thought maybe that’d be a bit gruesome for you.’

‘It’s fine,’ Efnisien said, staring down at Arden’s feet. They were kind of little. Gwyn had huge feet, and Efnisien’s were narrow, but long. Efnisien shoved his hands under his thighs so that he didn’t poke Arden’s small, snubby toes. He liked them.

‘Firstly,’ Arden said. ‘I had a really good time. I think we have great chemistry. It went better than I’d imagined. Like, I know it’s a first scene and we’re still figuring stuff out, but I thought overall, given your background thoughts on kink, your newness to everything, you were amazing. How did you go the past few days though? Have you crashed at all?’

‘Um,’ Efnisien leaned back against the couch and stared up at the shelving that held all his books. ‘Kind of, on Tuesday. But not any worse than usual. Monday felt kind of nice actually. Clear. But yeah no Tuesday was back to normal.’

‘But not worse than a regular bad day for you?’ Arden said curiously.

‘Yeah, nah, business as usual. I keep getting stressed about choir practice so like- I wasn’t sitting there thinking that it was because of Sunday or anything.’

‘You might not notice a connection sometimes,’ Arden said, as he typed something into his tablet. It reminded Efnisien so much of Dr Gary, he nearly smiled. What was it with these people logging everything all the time?

And then he thought of the notepaper in his pocket, rolled his eyes at himself and stretched his other leg out.

‘Everything seemed fine,’ Efnisien said. ‘The weirdest part was that Monday actually went pretty good. I don’t have like- I don’t have nice days that often. And it wasn’t that different, I just felt more productive and focused.’

‘Cool,’ Arden said, reading something on the tablet and then typing quickly. ‘Cool, cool. That’s not super unusual for some people after a scene, but I wouldn’t have expected it so soon. All right. I wanted to ask- Is handfeeding off the table again? With you panicking because you thought the food was drugged?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, sighing and looking at Arden in apology. ‘I think I can tell the difference between things are like – no I don’t want to do that at all – and then this was- I said at the time it was like a switch flicking. But it was fucked up. Because like I said, Crielle never poisoned my food. And I wasn’t even feeling poisoned, I was feeling calm. I just freaked. I’m not used to feeling calm, obviously.’

‘Yeah,’ Arden said, smiling a little, though he still looked uneasy. ‘Babe, I want to ask you a lot of questions about your past. Is that-? Is that allowed?’

‘You can ask whatever you want,’ Efnisien said, frowning.

Arden squinted like he wasn’t sure that was the truth, then nodded slowly like he was taking the subject seriously. Efnisien was a bit confused. He mostly answered questions whenever anyone asked them. He hadn’t been that bad about his family around Arden, had he?

It was just that his family stuff was so stupid, and Arden had really serious family stuff. Efnisien had nothing like Laurie hiding in his background. He didn’t want to make anything he’d gone through into a bigger deal than it really was. That felt like he was betraying Crielle, but it also felt like he was betraying Gwyn, too. Gwyn was the one who suffered, and Efnisien was the one who hurt him.

It was simple.

‘Well, maybe later, or another day, I just wanted to check,’ Arden said. ‘If I don’t do the post-mortem now, I’ll put it off and then we can’t have another scene this Sunday. You’d be up for that? Another scene? If not, that’s totally okay.’

‘No, I- I would,’ Efnisien said, swallowing.

‘That’s so good,’ Arden said. ‘I didn’t think we’d gone that hard, but you had a lot of um, emotional moments.’

‘Cuz I’m so fucked up.’

‘No,’ Arden said, his voice turning stern. ‘That’s not why. Ef, this stuff makes you so vulnerable. It’s _hard_ to trust people the way you’re trying to trust me. And you have some past trauma that makes it challenging. Having those emotional moments is going to happen. The sooner you get used to treating them like something normal – a blip in the radar that we can both deal with together – the sooner you’ll be less upset with yourself when it happens.’

Efnisien frowned at him, and Arden matched his expression but made it look like an exaggerated glower before his face broke out into a smile.

‘Sweetheart, it’s _great_ when you safeword. It’s so good! We can figure out what’s going on, we can decide what to do next, it means I can cater the scene more specifically to you, which means I’m more likely to get what I need as well. I know you’re still learning how to do it, and I’m happy to guide you with that, but it’ll be so great when you trust yourself enough to do it on your own.’

‘But it’s like… I bet other people don’t do it as much as me,’ Efnisien said.

‘Some people don’t,’ Arden said. ‘And some people _really should._ Trust me, I’d rather scene with someone who uses a safeword too often because they’re scared, than someone who uses one hardly at all and gets really hurt – in a way neither of us want – because of it. Like, if you were a brat who safeworded to control the scene to your liking, that would be different. We’d be having a different conversation right now. But I know you want to be good for me, and the best way – the best way! – you can do that, is to be honest. That includes safewords, Ef.’

Efnisien made a face, and Arden gently shoved at his thigh a few times with the balls of his feet, before looking over his tablet.

‘I’m not going to have you kneel as long next time,’ Arden said, in a businesslike manner. ‘At least not without a standing or sitting break first. That was my mistake. But do you think you could kneel again overall? Emotionally? I know you stalled out in the beginning, but how was it after that?’

‘Um…’ Efnisien stared into his kitchen, away from Arden’s face. He could feel his cheeks colouring. ‘I- Um. Yeah. I guess I didn’t mind it.’

‘Ohhhh,’ Arden drawled to himself. ‘He _liked_ it.’

‘Shut up,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘He liked it _a lot,’_ Arden said, sounding gleeful. ‘Note to self: Get him on his knees more often.’

Efnisien’s eyes widened, he swallowed down the choked noise that had risen in his throat. Arden had a way of doing this. Going from dorky to earnest to whatever the fuck this was. It was unfair, the way Arden crawled into his head and took him apart without doing anything other than talking.

‘So, I’m going to trust you,’ Arden said softly, ‘and keep handfeeding as something we can do. I’m happy about that because I love feeding you. If you panic in the future about it, we can take it as it comes – figure out if it stays or goes. But the fact that you’ve felt pretty normal and steady for you is really promising. What about gags? I noticed you seemed pretty comfortable with my hand over your mouth. So…maybe a cloth gag or something like that, sometimes?’

The chill bloomed in Efnisien’s gut so fast that it gripped the back of his head before he was fully aware of why he was responding so strongly. He looked at Arden in confusion and dread, and Arden’s expression changed.

Efnisien thought of all those victims spread-eagled on a bed, gagged, and Berdella raping them, or torturing them, or killing them. Berdella had gagged all of them. Every single one of them.

‘No?’ Arden said, watching him closely.

Efnisien opened his mouth to respond and couldn’t say anything. That was definitely something serial killers did. They didn’t gently put their hands over someone’s mouth, they _gagged_ them.

Arden pushed up onto his elbows, then sat up properly, and then moved closer and knelt by Efnisien’s side on the couch.

‘Hey,’ Arden said gently. ‘You freaking out?’

Efnisien nodded, staring at him.

‘Would it help if I told you that I’m never going to gag you?’

Efnisien nodded again.

‘I know it feels crappy,’ Arden said, his voice soft and even, ‘but it’s really great that your body can tell you that you don’t want to experience these things. Listening to your body is really important for the both of us, okay? I’m sorry for how much it scares you to think about it, but that’s like, a really clear response and that’s really helpful for me.’

‘Is it?’ Efnisien said, voice small, trying to tear himself away from Berdella’s house. A place he’d never been. He’d only seen all those photos. Crielle showing them to him, one by one, talking to him softly late at night when everyone else was in bed. They’d lie down together, and he’d get to lean into her, and in exchange, she’d show him all those photos.

‘Yeah,’ Arden said, reaching out slowly and carefully rubbing Efnisien’s arm. ‘You, um… Is it like a flashback? Or an intrusive thought? Something else?’

‘Second,’ Efnisien said hoarsely.

‘If you’re talking to me, that means we don’t need to call Dr Gary, right?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Um, sorry. God. Your hand is fine over my mouth, like on Sunday. But anything else, I just... I’m sorry, I just- It’s stupid. It’s not even personal. It’s not like I’ve ever experienced- It’s not even like I have a reason-’

‘Hey,’ Arden said. ‘Hey, no, no, no, it doesn’t work like that at all. You don’t get to say no because you’ve had it happen to you. It’s not like that. You just _get to say no._ I don’t need to know your reasons, though if you ever want to share them, I’d like to hear them. But you’re not accountable to me in that sense. Angel, what we do together is really intense, so we have these talks to be clear on all the things you don’t want, because it’s going to be hard for you _anyway._ Even when it’s stuff you want. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said, feeling calmer. ‘Okay.’

‘Yeah? So it’s just off the list, which is fine, because it was never _on_ the list. And we’ve still got a lot of stuff that we can do together. We’re not running out of things to do.’

‘I did like your hand though. Um, you know, doing- Over my mouth.’

‘Good,’ Arden said, staying close. ‘I liked that too.’

Efnisien sighed, and the sense that Berdella’s house was close and that he was somehow _right there_ faded into the background. And Arden’s arms were wrapping around him. Efnisien leaned in without thinking – feeling like he was stealing something he hadn’t earned – but this was harder than he thought it would be. He kept expecting to be set up in some kind of trap, and Arden kept proving it wasn’t a trap.

He was sure that wouldn’t last. He’d be trapped eventually. But…at least he wasn’t having to deal with situations like that all the time, and he’d put up with them daily for someone like Arden.

‘Is there…stuff I could be doing better?’ Efnisien said eventually. ‘Or anything I did wrong?’

‘Nope. You were respectful and you listened to my orders. You really tried, instead of half-assing it, and that’s exactly the right attitude to have. You did better than I expected, and I expected something pretty good.’

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said, swallowing. ‘But I keep- We keep talking about things you did that…I didn’t like. This feels really unfair.’

Arden withdrew and sat next to Efnisien, leaning against him and closing his tablet. ‘It’s not unfair. I’m responsible for you in those moments. And like, if you weren’t trying, or were…I don’t know, coming to me from a place of cynicism or something, we’d talk about it. Even that’s okay, as long as I can understand what’s happening and there’s a sense of cooperation or collaboration there. And like, in the future, sometimes I might have notes, or I might have a request for you. My only request this time is that you do your best to keep up the same attitude and willingness you showed this time. And maybe in the future, if you feel like you’re afraid or really uncertain, instead of waiting for me to suggest a safeword, you could try asking me if it was a good time to safeword if you didn’t feel comfortable saying it outright?’

‘I accused you of drugging me. I made you use the big safeword.’

‘You know,’ Arden said, tilting his head back and looking at a point in the distance. ‘It’s really like- Pretty much most people have some kind of issue with safewords. At least in the beginning. And here’s me thinking we’d get to bypass that because you’re so new to everything, but instead you have all this stigma over something you hadn’t even heard of until recently!’

‘Oh, yeah, if you want me not to be fucked up about this, you’ll need to clone me and have scenes with that guy instead,’ Efnisien said, smiling in spite of himself.

Arden laughed, and Efnisien felt more settled. So it wasn’t bad having Arden here. It was kind of nice. His apartment was way less crappy with Arden in it.

‘The post-mortem is done!’ Arden announced. ‘Now we can hang out. If you want to talk about the scene again later just let me know. Hey, do you want to go to the library and get a library card? It’s super easy.’

‘Um… No. I’ll- I like doing that stuff on my own.’

Arden sprang up and bounded into Efnisien’s kitchen. And then he pointed at the fridge and the cupboards, and Efnisien just nodded, thinking Arden was hungry.

But he wasn’t hungry, he was _nosey._

Some time later, Arden having found Efnisien’s fidget dice and moving the lever back and forth absently, he pointed at the tally board.

‘What’s that for?’ Arden said.

‘Um. If I have an intrusive thought that lasts longer than five minutes, I have to make a tally.’

There were seven tallies on the board. He’d definitely had worse mornings.

‘Is that…?’ Arden shook his head slightly. ‘So is this per week?’

Efnisien’s eyebrows lifted in bemusement, and Arden took in his expression.

‘Per _day?’_ Arden said. ‘This is just this morning?’

‘It’s been a good morning,’ Efnisien said, smiling ruefully. ‘Like, a lot of things play into it. They’re not always like- They’re not always the worst of the worst. It’s basically a device to get me used to paying attention to them, and paying attention to how much time they take from me. Dr Gary says it’s also a really good way to learn to notice when I’m not having them, because I used to think I was only intrusive thoughts – which is pretty typical black and white thinking for this kind of stuff – and it turned out it wasn’t true.’

Arden’s expression was troubled, and Efnisien wanted him to feel more comfortable again. He didn’t see what was so upsetting about it.

‘But you don’t enjoy any of the intrusive thoughts, do you?’ Arden said quietly, taking in the board.

Efnisien shook his head. No. He didn’t like them. Even when he’d been younger and they’d made him aroused, he always had to kind of force that adrenaline rush to feel good. But he used to think he was nothing else except those thoughts, and that’s what Crielle had thought too. So it was all he had to look forward to in life, the trajectory of it mapped out and inevitable in the pattern of his sadistic, extreme images of serial killers and crimes he saw himself committing. Those thoughts made him feel every crack in himself and knew he was just as monstrous as Crielle said he was, and knew he could never escape it. He would have no choice but to laugh, to hunt and kill, and run full speed along a path that would end with suicide and know that to be its own wild glee. What else could it be?

That was that.

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t like them.’

‘It’s just- It’s a lot of suffering, isn’t it?’ Arden said. ‘I just wish you didn’t suffer so much.’

It wasn’t the response Efnisien expected, and he didn’t know what to say. He’d never thought of the intrusive thoughts as being a kind of suffering. They were just something that happened, he had to put up with them. It was a lot better now that he knew he didn’t want to act on them. He didn’t know what to do with the intrusive thoughts where he was the victim of a serial killer, but it had to be better than seeing himself hurting people all the time.

‘It’s not that bad,’ Efnisien said. ‘And you get like- You get flashbacks, right?’

‘Not like I used to,’ Arden said, walking back over to the couch and sinking down. ‘But my path was different to some. My mum had me in a therapist’s office within like…god, maybe two days of my talking about it. And I was really lucky that my first therapist was really great at her job.’

Arden handed the fidget dice to Efnisien and sat cross-legged on the couch.

‘I still get them though,’ he said. ‘Some days are really bad. Some weeks too. When it’s not bad, I forget all about it. Not what he did – but how bad it can be, the flashbacks and the…effects of everything. Like my brain just doesn’t want me to remember what it’s like when I’m no longer in the worst of it. And then something triggers me, or I just have a bad time because it’s close to the date of Laurie’s death which is a really bad chronological trigger, and it’s fresh all over again.’

‘That sucks.’

‘Well, you know about it,’ Arden said quietly. ‘Because you got diagnosed with PTSD as well recently, didn’t you?’

‘I guess. Dr Gary just- He does that.’

‘Efnisien, I just know bits and pieces about your past and like…’ Arden pressed his thumbs against his temples and then shook his head. ‘It was bad.’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, his tone matching Arden’s.

‘Well. What would Dr Gary say?’ Arden said.

Efnisien thought about the memory that had come while he’d slept, the fully-formed moment of standing by Crielle’s bed and crying because of an unanswerable horror. He sighed.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Dr Gary thinks everything is serious.’

‘Maybe it is, sweetheart.’

‘Maybe,’ Efnisien said.

_But Gwyn had it way worse. Way, way worse._

‘You don’t have a TV,’ Arden said suddenly, looking around. ‘Can I read to you?’

‘What?’ Efnisien said, as Arden’s grin broadened.

‘Hell yeah, I read to the kids sometimes at our shop, and in our book club. Can I?’

‘You’d read to me?’ Efnisien said, smiling as Arden got up and went to the table and brought both of the books back. ‘For real? How much of this is just…you not being able to sit still?’

‘I’m a package deal, sweetheart,’ Arden said, looking over both of the books Efnisien had purchased. ‘It’s the onion of greatness, one of the layers is that I can’t sit still. I mean I _can,_ but my brain’s currently doing this thing where I want to really touch you, like a lot, and I’m telling myself to calm the fuck down. Because there’s always Sunday.’

‘You can touch me,’ Efnisien said, as Arden wedged himself up next to Efnisien like it was easy and normal.

‘Mm, in some ways, yes. In other ways, no.’

‘Oh, you mean like- Sex?’

‘No!’ Arden said brightly, opening the book on sea meadows. ‘I just mean- Look, sometimes in lieu of fidget spinners and fidget cubes and stuff, I will pet Isabelle for ages. Forever. Even she gets annoyed. But also Sunday. That’s _Sunday._ The first time I touch your skin, I want it to be a more controlled environment. God, I’m looking forward to that so much.’

Arden looked up like he was imagining it, and then he pinned Efnisien with a gaze that was heated and sharp.

‘So I’m going to read to you,’ Arden said, ‘or we can go for a walk or something. Or you can read to me! Or-’

‘You can read to me,’ Efnisien said, stalling the ten suggestions that were probably coming. His brain was locked on the fact that Arden wanted to touch his skin – which definitely meant beneath his clothing – and he wanted to do that soon. He had goosebumps just thinking about it.

‘So do you want sea meadows?’ Arden said. ‘Or space junk?’

‘I like both,’ Efnisien said. ‘Which one do you like more?’

‘Come on, space junk, that sounds awesome as fuck, doesn’t it?’

Efnisien nodded, and sank a little deeper into the couch as Arden opened the book. He thought of all the skin that covered his body, the fact that Arden wanted to touch some of it, and forced himself to take a slow breath.

‘Hey,’ he said roughly. ‘If I forget to say it later, thanks for coming over.’

‘Thanks for having me, sunshine,’ Arden said easily, and then he wiggled down into a more comfortable position and started reading.

 _That’s my boyfriend,_ Efnisien thought stupidly, and then smiled.


	40. Bigger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Paracetamol = acetaminophen = Tylenol (Panadol here).
> 
> So today it was like 42C/107F and I gotta tell you that Christmas day is going to be much of the same and yet...my family will be making...a traditional hot meal and so yeah that's life in Australia right now. That and me having to run the cold water tap for about three minutes so I don't scald my hands underneath it. 
> 
> I hope you're all taking care of yourselves <333

‘Um, I wrote out a list,’ Efnisien said, bringing out his ragged piece of notepaper after getting settled in the chair. ‘Which is maybe dumb. But like- There’s some things that are kind of bugging me and sometimes it’s hard to remember those things after seeing Arden. And I saw Arden today.’

‘That’s wonderful forethought,’ Dr Gary said smoothly. ‘You’re always welcome to come in with notes, Efnisien. It shows you’re really thinking ahead about the progress you want to make and where you want to make it.’

Efnisien stared down at his sheet of paper, while his brain slowly ticked to a halt and then he looked up.

‘Y’know, I completely forgot how much I hated therapy until like, right this moment, and you helped me remember all over again. Like new. Thanks Doc, that’s some gift.’

Dr Gary’s lips twitched, but he didn’t say anything, and Efnisien was a little annoyed that Dr Gary didn’t take the bait. And strangely, a little pleased too.

It was a lot easier to bait Dr Gary than to talk about the things he was actually there to talk about. He half-wished that Dr Gary would take over the appointment and tell Efnisien what they were going to focus on. That would be easier.

‘We probably won’t get to all of this,’ Efnisien said, staring at the sheet again.

‘That’s fine,’ Dr Gary said.

‘I don’t want to talk about most of it.’

‘That’s understandable,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Therapy can be challenging at the best of times. You said you don’t want to talk about most of it, is there anything that’s perhaps easier that you want to start with?’

Efnisien pursed his lips, then nodded once. ‘Um, can I…? Can I see Mika again? But with you here? Like last time? Except that I might ask you to leave again, which seems really stupid, because it’s your office and maybe I should just be seeing him separately or some shit.’

_Except I don’t really want to._

‘Of course we can organise another session with Mika,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I have no problems hosting him here as a consultant, and I also have no problems waiting outside for as much of the session as you need me to. It’s great that you’re choosing an active role in your treatment by recognising when you might need to see a different specialist, and it’s normal to not always want me involved in every part of your process.’

Efnisien nodded tightly. He was nervous about seeing Mika again, but he didn’t feel right talking to Dr Gary about some of the things he was worried about. Talking about this technically left four things on his list, because he wanted going to talk about how fucking weak he was as a person with Mika.

‘I don’t want to talk about the rest of this stuff,’ Efnisien said roughly.

‘You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t feel ready to talk about,’ Dr Gary said calmly.

‘Just- You’re going to- And it’s so fucking- Okay, this one should be easier than the first two at least. I guess. So like- Um. So it’s normal for parents to give their kids medicine and stuff when they’re having nightmares, right? Like, if you have a kid that won’t shut the fuck up, because they’re crying or whatever, it’s normal to give them sleeping tablets and stuff, right?’

Dr Gary didn’t react which meant he thought it either _wasn’t_ fucking normal at all, or he was starting to get excited, or maybe both.

It didn’t make sense. This wasn’t the kind of thing Dr Gary was supposed to Christmas boner over.

‘But it’s _normal,_ right?’ Efnisien said in frustration. ‘Like, how the fuck else are you supposed to deal with them? Kids are like, overwrought and lose their shit all the time, and it’s the best way to regulate their sleep and make sure they stay calm. Otherwise parents would never get any sleep, and kids would never learn how to like, I don’t know, how to get control of themselves.’

Dr Gary tilted his head to the side and stared off into the space beneath his office desk. Which meant he was really thinking about what he wanted to say next. And Efnisien shoved the notepaper between his thigh and the armrest because he didn’t want to look at it anymore. This subject made him shaky, not because of being given medicine as a kid, but because he had a feeling he was going to have to argue with Dr Gary about what normal was.

‘Sometimes,’ Dr Gary said slowly, ‘a child may present with severe emotional or behavioural distress. In those cases, there are often a battery of tests that have to follow to rule out physical ailments – cancer, malnourishment that leads to personality changes and so on – and then there need to be the tests and interviews that rule out other causes like abuse, which is one of the most common causes of early onset severe emotional distress. There might also be tests for ADHD, or other disorders that can have early onset in children. The decision to medicate is rarely taken lightly by treating specialists, doctors and caregivers. Medication is almost never in the form of sleeping tablets.’

Efnisien had never – at least not that he remembered – been given any kinds of tests for anything at all relating to sleeping badly or crying sometimes. He remembered going through an IQ test, and he remembered one of the school’s tests that meant Crielle spent one day telling him that he was a gifted child. She spent the rest of the week telling him it was useless to be gifted unless he learned how to mask it and turn those skills towards something practical.

_‘Trust me, darling, being gifted means nothing more than being singled out for the way you think, and it’s not the privilege they make it out to be. It only means you need to work harder to pass in this world of sheep and the wolves who hunt them. But as someone who was a ‘gifted child’ myself, this is something I can teach you, and since you’re bright, you’ll pick it up quickly.’_

_‘Thank you, Mama.’_

But there were no medical tests. Doctors were something the family had always been kind of weird about.

‘May I ask what you’ve been thinking about that made you bring this up?’ Dr Gary said, a minute later.

Efnisien refused to talk about what he’d been doing with Arden that made him think about it in the first place, but the dream-memory loomed large in the back of his mind, and so he related that instead. Eventually he had to look away from Dr Gary, who was reacting like it was some kind of huge deal, and that felt uncomfortable as fuck.

‘She gave me the tablets because she cared about me,’ Efnisien said at the end.

‘Do you know what the rest of the tablets did?’ Dr Gary said softly.

‘Um. No. I mean I think one was like…a painkiller. I’m pretty sure she gave me like, ah, Loperamide? I didn’t know that at the time, but I think- Yeah. Maybe. Something to stop me from getting the runs. I don’t know. But sometimes there were like four or five pills. I don’t know what they all did.’

‘So you were having stomach cramps and diarrhea even as a child?’

Efnisien stared down at his knees, then shoved his thumb into his mouth and bit at the skin around the side of his nail. It had grown harder over time, easier to bite into. After a while, he shrugged, then pulled his hands back into his sleeves.

‘Um. When I was little,’ he said. ‘Not all the time. But it would’ve been too inconvenient for her to leave it alone.’

‘Efnisien, I want to tell you something that you may find difficult to hear.’

His teeth ground together. He had goosebumps. He didn’t like this. But he just nodded, his neck tense.

‘The healthy thing to do when you have a child who is distressed as much as you were, is to comfort them. Yes, sometimes it means less sleep for the parent. That’s what a parent signs up for when they have a child.’

‘But I wasn’t her child,’ Efnisien said.

‘It’s what _any_ primary caretaker signs up for,’ Dr Gary said firmly. ‘Whether it’s someone adopting a child for the first time, or grandparents taking care of their grandchildren just for the weekend. The healthy thing to do would be to comfort the child, which would generally come in the form of consolation – verbal or physical – and asking what they were so scared of, and if possible, defusing those fears or holding space for them when they’re realistic. It is _not_ to give a child medication to make the emotional distress go away.’

‘But I was out of control,’ Efnisien said. ‘I know she didn’t take me to doctors, but if she did, I bet they would have diagnosed me with a ton of shit.’

‘You were crying because you had a nightmare,’ Dr Gary said, faintly incredulous. ‘You weren’t screaming, you weren’t throwing a tantrum, you weren’t breaking objects, you weren’t hurting anyone, and even if you _were_ doing those things, structure, comfort and consolation go a long way in helping children to learn how to regulate their emotions, because they then learn it is _safe_ to have those emotions in the first place because their primary caregivers will always love and accept them, even when it’s not always easy to do so.’

‘But Crielle really needed her sleep,’ Efnisien said, annoyed.

‘How disrupted do you think her sleep would have really been, if she had simply consoled you for a few minutes longer?’ Dr Gary said.

‘No, but- I mean- I was like… I was a really selfish and greedy kid. I would’ve just kept _taking_ from her.’

‘Why do you think you were selfish and greedy?’

‘Because I _was!’_ Efnisien said, his fingers digging into the armrests through his jumper. ‘Because I was, okay?’

‘You have just told me that you spent a significant amount of time trying _not_ to wake Crielle, because you knew her sleep was important even as a young child. You were trying to self-regulate yourself, and – from what it sounds – trying to console yourself simply by standing in her room. Do you think those are the behaviours of a selfish child?’

‘Yes,’ Efnisien said.

Dr Gary opened his mouth, then closed it again. He leaned back in his chair, staring off to the side again, and his breathing was slow and even. All of that meant Dr Gary was kind of upset, and Efnisien was kind of upset too, but he couldn’t tell why.

_Maybe because he keeps trying to tell you that your past was something it wasn’t._

‘How long – how many years – did she give you drugs that hadn’t been prescribed to you? How long did she drug you for?’ Dr Gary said finally, his voice quieter than before.

‘I dunno,’ Efnisien said. ‘She started before I can really remember. So maybe before the age of four or five. She stopped when I was in high school, I think. But it wasn’t like every night or anything.’

Dr Gary was silent, and Efnisien shook his hand out his sleeve and started biting the corner of his thumb again.

‘You’re acting like this is a really big deal,’ Efnisien said, in confusion.

‘Because it’s long-term child abuse,’ Dr Gary said calmly. ‘It is, in some countries, a criminal offense. One of the reasons it’s not talked about more often is simply that it doesn’t happen as often as some of the other forms of child abuse, though I personally think it happens more than the studies indicate, as it’s chronically under-reported. It’s usually in the form of parents giving children alcohol, excessive over-the-counter medication or sedatives so they don’t have to deal with their child’s distress. Crielle didn’t give you alcohol, but she was medicating you with sedatives to make the _normal_ emotions you were having disappear.’

Efnisien had been ready to push back, to really fight Dr Gary on this, but Dr Gary wasn’t even making it personal. He was just talking like…everything he was saying was a fact.

‘Crielle was really smart though,’ Efnisien said weakly. ‘She’d know when to use those medications. Like, she’d know how to use them the right way.’

‘Is that what you told yourself when she poisoned Gwyn?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘That’s different. She hated him. She loved me.’

Dr Gary grimaced, nodded, then laced his fingers together. ‘Love by default isn’t a virtuous emotion,’ he said finally. ‘No emotion in and of itself is good or bad, this includes love. And the emotion of love can be conditional; it can be unconditional. It can be virtuous, and it can be used to excuse monstrous behaviour. You know this yourself, Efnisien. You did terrible things to people and animals, in part, because you loved Crielle so much. Do you accept that this is true?’

Efnisien nodded. It used to be that he told himself he loved doing those terrible things. And for over a year, that’s what he told Dr Gary too. But it was getting harder to see it that way. He couldn’t imagine that he would have ever done those things if it weren’t for the fact that Crielle loved him for it, and he loved her so badly in return, and needed her to be pleased with him.

He felt tired, cold, and still really fucking frustrated.

‘There was a point in what you related,’ Dr Gary continued, ‘where you said she told you that you had no one else except for her. That your parents didn’t want you. Did she tell you that often?’

‘Mmhm,’ Efnisien said. ‘It was true.’

‘Did it upset you?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘It’s the truth.’

‘It is the truth that tends to be the most upsetting. The lies we tell ourselves are often a form of consolation by comparison,’ Dr Gary said.

‘You just want me to be upset that my parents left me with her,’ Efnisien said, sighing. ‘I don’t get why you keep going on about this. It’s fine. I had Crielle.’

‘Provided you obeyed strict and abusive rules to keep her. Rules that were arbitrary, with shifting goalposts depending on her mood. But let’s look at this a different way. You mentioned being afraid to make her angry. What happened when you made her mad?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said blankly. ‘We don’t talk about that.’

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said patiently. ‘She slapped you across the face. Did that happen often?’

‘Sometimes,’ he said, feeling like that was a slightly safer thing to talk about. ‘Mostly when I was like…hysterical. She usually only did it once.’

‘Usually?’ Dr Gary said, and Efnisien thought he was trying to hide the sharpness in his voice, and he hadn’t quite succeeded.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘And even if she did it more than once, it was like, I dunno… two or three times. That’s it. And not hard. Not like the way Lludd hit Gwyn. She never left bruises.’

‘I’m not sure Lludd’s violence towards Gwyn should be the litmus test by which you measure Crielle’s violence towards you.’

‘She wasn’t _violent,’_ Efnisien said, indignant. ‘That’s not the same. She couldn’t get through to me otherwise. You’ve met me.’

‘I have. I’ve always found that talking to you with compassionate firmness is very effective when it comes to getting through to you, as you put it.’

Efnisien made a face. ‘Don’t be so fucking- You _know_ I’m not easy to deal with. I’m like- And I was worse as a kid. Like, there was a reason my parents left me behind, you know.’

‘Was there?’ Dr Gary said, and his voice was so soft it was fucking dangerous, and Efnisien’s inner alarm signal blared. ‘You were a baby, weren’t you? You’ve told me yourself that they abandoned you because they simply didn’t want to deal with the responsibility of a baby. Do you think they left you behind because you were a bad child? Is that something you think they could have known when you were an infant?’

Efnisien frowned, confused. ‘No- I… That’s not…’

Dr Gary had a bead on him, and Efnisien felt hunted. He used to try and control these sessions and he’d given up on it, and now he was really fucking regretting it.

‘You were a healthy, human baby when your parents abandoned you,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I have to ask; do you think all parents hit their children?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘But- I mean no, I know they don’t. But that’s- Their children weren’t being cruel to people and animals! They weren’t like me.’

‘But she wasn’t hitting you because you were being cruel, Efnisien. She was hitting you across the face because you were crying, because you had an upsetting, horrific nightmare. Because – for whatever reason – she couldn’t be bothered consoling you.’

Efnisien’s breath caught.

‘But she _did,’_ Efnisien said, his annoyance cracking open into anger. ‘She did! She gave me the pills! And she helped me sleep again!’

‘You said yourself that you thought she was going to embrace you, and that’s what you _wanted,_ and then she struck you across the face,’ Dr Gary said.

‘Because- I don’t- This isn’t even a big deal! This isn’t a big deal! It’s not something that matters, goddamn it, I didn’t bring it up so you’d do this! You don’t need to fucking tear everything apart all the time. Why do you always have to fucking do this? I was just checking to see if it was normal if parents give their kids meds, okay? Okay? That’s fucking _all._ That’s all. And you said it wasn’t a healthy thing to do. So I have an answer. So _okay.’_

The room was quiet, and Mack wasn’t typing at the keyboard beyond the office door, and Efnisien’s hands were wedged tightly together and his palms were sweating and the only thing he could hear was the hum of Dr Gary’s laptop and his own fucking breathing.

‘I want to ask you a question,’ Dr Gary said.

About fifty sentences – variations on the theme ‘shut the fuck up’ – rose up inside of him, but he couldn’t pick one, and then he was too exhausted to try.

‘What would it mean if Crielle was not as loving or caring towards you as you like to imagine she was?’

_‘No,’_ Efnisien said, his voice plaintive. ‘No, we’re _not_ talking about that.’

He hated that Dr Gary framed it in past tense, too, because Crielle was _gone._

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said.

‘You just want to make everything she did into abuse, because you don’t understand how hard she had it. You don’t get it! No one understands the way she thinks about things. No one understands how brilliant she is! And worse than that, she had to deal with me when my parents left. Like, can you imagine? I can barely fucking deal with myself. I’m surprised she wasn’t _worse.’_

‘You are not any more difficult to deal with than most people with a trauma disorder,’ Dr Gary said. ‘And a fair bit easier to deal with than many of my clients.’

‘ _Now,_ maybe,’ Efnisien said. ‘But then? Like- It’s been better in the last few years, but you don’t know how I was back then.’

‘Do you think it’s been better because she hasn’t been around you?’

‘I-’

Efnisien’s words dried up, and Dr Gary looked like some kind of mix of sympathetic and self-satisfied at the same time. Efnisien wanted to grab a pen and shove it deep into his eye until it pierced through and splattered out the other side. He wanted to get right into his brain and draw his name with ink that wouldn’t run, because it would be too wet and gross in there.

_Do you think it’s been better because she hasn’t been around you?_

No, it was that Efnisien decided not to hurt people anymore, or hurt and kill animals. But he also knew what Dr Gary would say about that too. He’d point out that Crielle wanted him to do that in the first place. Crielle didn’t think that was the kind of thing that needed therapy.

He dug his knuckles into the side of his head, needing something else to concentrate on.

‘I thought it was normal,’ he said, his voice gritting out. ‘I thought everyone gave their kids meds. She said so. That’s how kids… That’s how… I don’t get it.’

Dr Gary said nothing, and Efnisien’s eyes closed.

‘I don’t get why it’s abusive,’ he said finally, feeling like he needed _sleep_. ‘I don’t _get_ that. She did it to help me.’

‘She did it to help herself,’ Dr Gary said flatly. ‘But let’s talk about why medicating children in this way is abusive. Firstly, it’s incredibly dangerous. If a doctor isn’t prescribing you those medications and checking up on your reactions to them regularly, it’s incredibly easy to overdose or underdose children. Overdosing is more common. Secondly, the long-term use of sedatives, analgesics and other medications all come with risks. They might be risks to your body. Risks of addiction. Risks of contraindications. Risks of side effects as they interact with other drugs.

‘Many drugs have never been tested on children, or are not meant to be prescribed to children, and it’s clear that she was giving you prescription medication. Parents are _not_ doctors, and even paracetamol can be lethal if the dose is too high. Giving a child with a fever medicine is one thing, giving a child who cries a sedative to stop them from crying – simply because the parent is tired – is at best, an extremely poor decision, and at worst – if done regularly – criminally abusive and neglectful.’

‘Why?’ Efnisien said, staring at Dr Gary in confusion.

Dr Gary grimaced. ‘Because children have rights too. And because some children die from it, Efnisien. _Especially_ in the cases where sedatives are used. Giving prescription medicine to a child for a nonmedical use… It’s called malicious in my circles. Malicious drugging. A primary caregiver doing this to a child on a regular or semi-regular basis simply to escape their _responsibility_ to parent the child, is harming that child for their own convenience.

‘As a child, the United Nations has stated that you have a right to expect many things under the ‘3 Ps’ – provision, protection, and participation. Under the right of protection, you have the right to expect protection from abuse and neglect as well as other things. That branch also includes the right to constructive child rearing. Which Crielle clearly failed at. Under the provision branch, you also have a right to an adequate standard of health care. Crielle giving you medications whenever she felt like it, for reasons she didn’t disclose to you, because she refused to comfort a child having a nightmare, are the _opposite_ of that.’

There was nothing to say. Efnisien had never looked up the rights of children before. It hadn’t really occurred to him that children had any rights at all. They were just children. Useless.

‘Efnisien,’ Dr Gary said gently, ‘Crielle is – as you have stated – brilliant and extremely intelligent. She would have known that she was doing the wrong thing, even if she felt justified. In the same way that you know it was against the law to molest those people, even if you felt justified at the time. She knew that, she lied to you and told you it was for your own good, she hit you, and then she chose to drug you simply because she couldn’t be bothered to give you another ten minutes of her time.’

‘But she hated Gwyn,’ Efnisien said, but his voice sounded devoid of life. He felt like he’d been bled out, and there was nothing left inside of him. He was whispery papery husks of emptiness. A person made of sycamore seeds.

‘I would tender that no one is safe around someone like Crielle,’ Dr Gary said eventually. ‘And that just as you were saved from certain aspects of her abuse that she inflicted on Gwyn, so too was Gwyn saved from certain aspects of her abuse that she inflicted on you.’

‘But…’ _But she was so good to me._ He tried again. ‘Maybe if I wasn’t so scared all the time, it would’ve been better. I dreamed about serial killers a lot for a while.’

‘Most children don’t know serial killers exist,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Why did _you_ know they existed?’

God-Jesus. He knew why. He hunched in his chair, drawing his feet up to his chest. The chair was large enough, he could manage it.

‘You deserved better than that,’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien shook his head faintly and stared off at the plant. The leaves were looking much shinier now, the plant seemed happier. Except that Dr Gary said that plants couldn’t feel things like that. Well. It was looking healthier.

His eyes drifted shut. He was wiped out already.

‘What if I made it up?’ he said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘What if I made it the memory up though?’ he said. ‘What if she never did that? What if something’s wrong with me and I’m hallucinating my past?’

‘What’s making you think that?’ Dr Gary said, sounding way more alert now.

Efnisien sighed and rested his forehead on his knee.

‘That was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about, Doc. I think I’m maybe hallucinating some things that never happened, and I just- want to figure that out.’

But right now, in this minute, he was just going to swim in the darkness for a little while and try to drag himself out of this tiredness. He felt like he’d been hit by a truck, and kind of wished he _had_ been, because then he’d be unconscious or dead. Everything good in his life felt so distant. Had Arden only waved him off like an hour ago? Impossible.

Maybe once Dr Gary agreed he was having hallucinations, Efnisien could reject them and go back to feeling better about his dumb fucking past.


	41. Lludd

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been sitting on some of these memories of Efnisien's for such a long time now. Anyway, please take care of yourselves, and I'm sending hot chocolates to everyone except those of us in the southern hemisphere who need like...beaches and bingsu right now.
> 
> Note: Lex parsimoniae refers to the Law of Parsimony which is just a really fancy way of saying Occam’s Razor, which is the theory that the simplest conclusion is usually correct.

‘What makes you think you’re having hallucinations?’ Dr Gary said.

‘I mean what makes you think I’m _not_ having them?’ Efnisien countered. ‘It’s just, like, all my life with Lludd, I was sure he didn’t do anything to me. And now I keep getting these weird visions of things. And it’s snapshots, and I know they connect to bigger – well I guess maybe they’re not memories at all… And it just seems like- Maybe it’s fake. Maybe it’s not real. Lludd hurt Gwyn, not me.’

‘Well, we know that’s not true,’ Dr Gary said, watching Efnisien closely.

‘But you _don’t_ know. You just have what I say to go on. I could be making stuff up. Hallucinating things. I have the intrusive thoughts, right? And they’re like hallucinations. So- Like- Maybe I’m doing it to get sympathy. Do you think I’m doing it to get sympathy?’

‘Are you telling people about these memories?’ Dr Gary said softly. ‘Are you getting sympathy?’

‘I mean I don’t really talk about my past, because it’s bullshit,’ Efnisien said, his fingers digging into the armrests again. ‘But I _could_ like… I _could_ talk about it.’

‘You said that these potential memories or hallucinations are all about Lludd? Do you want to share one of them with me?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, pulling more tightly into the chair.

‘Let’s look at it this way. If it’s a hallucination, it can be good to talk about their content in order to figure out what might be going on, what your brain is trying to express through the hallucination. You don’t show any signs of the kinds of schizotypal or schizoaffective behaviours in assessments that indicate hallucinations are this sort of pathway for you, so I feel we can safely rule that out. If it’s a memory or a flashback, it can be good to talk about why you’re convinced it’s a hallucination.’

It all sounded pretty goddamn dubious, and Efnisien grabbed at his hair briefly. He stared at the glass of water that Dr Gary provided for him, because Efnisien didn’t break glasses anymore. He tried to imagine himself doing it, but it seemed like such a juvenile thing to do. He supposed it was.

Instead he lay his head on his knee and wondered if this was juvenile too. Maybe one day he’d look back on how he was behaving in this moment, and hate himself for being such an idiot.

He thought about talking about how Lludd behaved when it was just the two of them in the car, but there was another thing bugging him, lurking in the back of his mind. Just glancing at it made his whole body feel cold, and he wished he had another jumper, or a coat or something. Maybe Arden’s scarf. He’d stopped wearing it, but he should’ve brought it with him.

He could tell Dr Gary was feeling doubtful about whether he was having hallucinations at all, so if Efnisien picked _that_ memory then surely Dr Gary would understand how batshit insane it was and accept they were hallucinations and tell him that most of his past was made up for attention.

He’d made it up, and that was something to worry about, but it wouldn’t be as bad as if it were all real in the first place.

‘You’ve often said that Lludd hated you,’ Dr Gary said, his voice modulated and careful. ‘Do you want to talk about that?’

‘There was like this one thing, this one thing that I’m sure- I don’t know. I don’t like thinking about it. Because- It’s just…’

‘Take your time,’ Dr Gary said.

‘It’s just so stupid,’ Efnisien said, one of his legs dropping heavily to the floor. ‘It’s stupid. It’s nothing really. Like nothing really happened. It was nothing. And he was never violent towards me. He would never do that. He hated- I mean he hated both of us. So much.’

Dr Gary didn’t say anything, and Efnisien’s heart was beating harder and faster as he edged closer towards one of the things in his head that couldn’t be real. Definitely wasn’t real.

 _Am I doing this?_ he thought. _Really?_

He’d get to see Arden on Sunday. No fucking way was he going to choir practice on Saturday. No way. And if he just got through this session, he didn’t have to see Dr Gary for a week. He hated that this hallucination-memory-thing just…lingered. He hated that it was coming up more and more. He was supposed to be done with his past.

‘I was eight,’ Efnisien said abruptly, trying not to see what his brain was making him see. ‘I was eight because- I’d recently…had a birthday. I think. I wasn’t allowed to have parties because I wasn’t really…supposed to have friends. But Crielle invited like, family friends over, and I think she got me some canaries. You know- You know why.’

But he wasn’t really seeing the canaries, or that stupid birthday, as stupid as all his other birthdays. He didn’t care about it, and he hadn’t celebrated his birthday in years. He kept hoping he’d forget the date.

‘I’d made him mad,’ Efnisien said, his other leg dropping to the ground, his hands locking tight against his belly. ‘I can’t remember why. I was always making him mad. Crielle- Crielle kind of pitted us against each other. Like, she’d tell Lludd that I loved her more than he did. Or she’d tell him that I was better for her than he was. Or she’d tell him that I was more handsome. And like, that could be really good, but it also could be really bad. Sometimes she left me alone with him after.’

That also wasn’t what he was going to talk about.

He expected Dr Gary to interrupt him, but Dr Gary didn’t say a word.

He felt like he was back there. It was so vivid. It was stupid. Even the undersides of his feet were colder than normal.

‘I was…in the house,’ Efnisien said, feeling foggy. ‘He came upstairs and told me to join him to get something out of the car. It was late. Late enough that Crielle was in bed, and I was up doing homework at the table. And he told me he needed help getting something out of the car.’

Efnisien frowned, staring down at the table, and seeing the blurry shape of his file where he’d been handwriting notes, because he remembered information better that way. It was trigonometry, because even though Crielle said he shouldn’t go into any gifted or advanced programs, he was so fucking bored, and he liked maths. He just wanted something interesting. Something…

He remembered Lludd’s presence nearby. Like a wall of energy that prickled and felt looming. Lludd’s blue eyes weren’t like Crielle’s, and they were piercing, and they had never ever been warm. Even when he was happy, they weren’t warm.

It was late, and Efnisien tended to sleep badly. He didn’t like interrupting Crielle, and sometimes the nightmares eased off on their own, but he struggled to fall asleep at the best of times and he never really wanted to go to bed. Once he was there, he was way too attached to his plush toys, and he hated them. He was meant to be grown. A little man. Instead he pulled his toys all around himself and hoped they’d protect him even though they were _dead._ And then he’d cut them up when he was mad at himself for needing them.

 _I was eight,_ he thought.

Was he? Did it even matter if he made it up?

But he could feel the weight of his steps as he walked down the stairs towards the garage.

‘We had an underground garage,’ Efnisien said. ‘For all of Lludd’s cars, and for Crielle’s. She only had three. He had more. It was like, all concrete floors, and it was huge and had a ceiling that felt heavy. It echoed down there. A lot of the time cars were brought to the front of the house if we were going somewhere, so I didn’t actually go in there a ton.’

He remembered Lludd never looked back at him, not once.

‘I can’t remember what I did to make him so mad,’ Efnisien said quietly. ‘I don’t know. And like he didn’t say anything he was… You can just _tell._ His jaw jumps, you know. Gwyn’s does exactly the same thing when he’s mad that way. His jaw did it that day at the school. It’s such a tell. I bet people who see it on the wrestling mat think they’re about to be fucking murdered.’

Efnisien pointed absently to his jaw. He always imagined Lludd clenching his teeth so hard, maybe he imagined he was biting someone’s face in half. Nothing would surprise him, with Lludd.

‘We were in the garage. He took me over to one of his cars. There were servants in the house, so he must’ve… I must’ve thought he was mad because he was making me do the work that servants normally did. I think I said, ‘This is bullshit, get Alistair to help you.’’

Efnisien took a slow, shaking breath. Had he said that? He remembered the way Lludd had looked down at him. And then they were standing by the boot of the car.

‘He told me- He told me I disrespected him too much. And I laughed, and said I didn’t do it any more than Crielle, and then he like- I don’t know. He did something with his body, and I thought he was going to hit me, and I think- I must’ve flinched. Because he smiled. But he didn’t hit me because he doesn’t do that.’

Shaking breaths now, staring at the boot of the car.

‘He opens up the boot, you know. He just opens it. And I expect like, files or paperwork, or briefcases or something. And instead. Instead…’

_Instead…_

‘There’s all this blood,’ Efnisien whispered. ‘There’s so much blood. Like more than I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot you know, because of some of the things I’ve done to animals. And it’s all over the boot of the car in this huge stain and it’s not like, it’s not fully dry, and it’s still kind of red, it hasn’t like, it hasn’t gone that brown-black colour that it goes. And it’s- There’s… Like…’

Efnisien’s hands were in front of himself, hovering above his thighs, like he was looking through his fingers. He could see the boot so clearly, but he didn’t want to talk about it, he didn’t want to describe it. But he couldn’t make himself stop.

‘There’s this smell,’ he said, his voice higher than normal. ‘Like that much blood leaves a smell. I dunno how to… I mean it’s just the smell of a lot of fucking blood. And there’s bits of- There’s bits…’

His breathing was shallow, he felt dizzy.

‘Like, gore, I guess,’ Efnisien finished roughly. ‘Bits of gore. Like, stuck- Stuck down. Just small bits. I can’t see any gunshots in the carpet in the boot but I’m like- Maybe he’s shot someone in there, but there’s no gunshot marks. Just all this blood. And then I think maybe he’s stabbed someone. He’s definitely killed someone. Or maybe someone else has done it. Someone else must have done it. But I look at him, and he has this expression on his face and he’s really, he’s really… he really _likes_ how afraid I am. He looks like…’

Efnisien didn’t know how to describe what Lludd looked like. But his eyes were bright and avid and hungry, and he stared at Efnisien like a laser.

‘He says that I’ve disrespected him too many times,’ Efnisien said. ‘And then he says that basically… it would be so easy to do this to me. So easy. He’s pointing at the blood. Because it’s easy for him to do things like this. And I remember looking at the exit, like the stairs back up to the main part of the house, and there’s a lift too but I was never allowed to use it. Like a service elevator. Who’s rich enough to have a service elevator in their fucking house? God. But I looked, and he stepped sideways and blocked my line of sight, and I knew I was fucked. Like I- in a way I hadn’t really appreciated before. I was fucked. Cuz he’s like athletic, you know, he’s _fit,_ and even if I bolted, he’d catch me.’

His whole body was frozen. The garage was always so cold.

‘I say, um, ‘You can’t make me clean up the blood.’ And he has this smile. Like he has this smile when he knows he’s won, or he’s like…about to win. And he tells me I’m not there to c-clean up the blood. My brain’s working so slowly. Like I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out sooner. But he leans down, and I think for a second he’s going to strangle me, or hug me, like what the fuck, and I can’t- I don’t know what to do. And then he’s lifting me.’

Efnisien’s hands were up in front of him, fingers clawed around air, unconsciously mimicking the way Lludd had just grabbed him around the waist and lifted him like he weighed nothing. Like Gwyn, Lludd was muscular and cut and spent a lot of time in the gym or doing martial arts. Crielle sometimes called him nothing more than a blunt object for hitting people with, and Lludd would stare at her blankly, and she’d laugh. She’d laugh prettily about it.

‘It’s so fast,’ Efnisien said, his voice shaking and fading in and out. ‘One moment I’m in the air, and then I’m in the boot, and I don’t really realise what he’s done until he slams it shut and I’m in the dark. Like, the _dark._ And the smell of blood is everywhere and I- I don’t know why I’m so scared, you know, I don’t _know._ It’s just blood. But I can’t get the smell out of my nose and he definitely k-killed someone in there or near the boot and I feel like- I don’t know. And I start screaming. And I think he’ll open the boot because I’m screaming, and he doesn’t. He _doesn’t.’_

Efnisien’s breathing was fast now. Sharp, painful, and his hands shook. His eyes were wet, and he reached up to quickly brush the tears away, but even his cheeks were wet. Stupid. Stupid.

‘I think it’s like half an hour maybe,’ Efnisien said. ‘An hour. I don’t know. I lost- I was losing my voice. I tried everything. Like I’m trying. I kick at the seats in the back of the car, and the blood is _wet,_ like it’s wet under me and it’s seeping into my pyjamas and I try kicking at the boot but like the garage is fucking soundproofed _,_ and it’s concrete and it’s underground and I don’t even know he’s still there and I think like, he’s left me there. Or maybe he’s going to drive away and kill me. Like he’s definitely going to k-kill me. He _wants_ to. He’s _said_ so. And I don’t know how he’ll pass that off to Crielle, but she’s the kind of person to avoid a scandal so she’d probably just…I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s nice to think she’d do something if he killed me, and I think she would, but I don’t know.’

His feet and legs were tense, he felt like he wanted to kick at the ground, or kick at his chair. His whole body was frozen. He felt cold and locked up and trapped.

‘I’m crying,’ he said. ‘I try not to but then I just am. And he comes back ages later and opens the boot and I think he says something about how I’m not to disrespect him anymore but I cut him off and like _launch_ out of the car like a fucking rocket and sprint away from him and I think I yell something like, ‘I’m telling Mama!’ but my voice _isn’t_ working. I get up like two of those stairs and then his arm is around my waist again. He’s the strongest person in that house.’

Absently clawing at his shirt, like he can remove the arm he can feel there, and he’s vaguely aware that he shouldn’t be doing that, but he also can’t really make himself stop. His body is suffused with weak echoes of what he did in the moment.

‘He- And then- Like he- He carries me back to the car, um.’ Efnisien gulped, feeling sick. ‘And I’m like, begging him, because I know what he’s going to do. I’m so scared. I’m begging him. Like, ‘No, no, no, please, I’m sorry.’ And he’s saying something about _respect,_ and how I’m too stupid to learn, the stupidest person in the house because even Gwyn _tries_ to learn. And then he shoves me back in there and I’m screaming until he mashes my head down into the blood in the carpet, and I can’t- There’s nothing… Like it was on my _face,_ from this random person.’

Efnisien’s voice was breaking, and he was definitely kind of just crying now. Not like sobbing or anything, not that, but it was there in his words and it was embarrassing. He was such a fucking idiot.

This stupid memory.

Hardly anything happened. Lludd didn’t even hit him like he hit Gwyn.

‘There’s a click,’ Efnisien said, feeling the cold metal against the side of his head. ‘It’s a gun. And Lludd just leaves it there, and I like- Um. Like a fucking _baby,_ I piss myself, and then he laughs at me and moves the gun away and says something like, ‘Maybe you _can_ learn’ and closes the boot again. And I don’t- Like I’m not screaming at first because I know I’m in the exact position that other person was in, the position he forced me into, and all I can feel is…’

He gestured to the side of his head and then dug his knuckles into the spot where the gun had been like he could erase the sensation.

He felt like he was suffocating, even though he wasn’t.

He refused to look up, but he could barely do anything at all, his body convinced he was in the boot of a car.

‘And I…d-don’t…remember the rest properly,’ Efnisien said, shaking hard. ‘I know he c-came back at some point and I’d completely lost my voice. Crielle thought I was sick, and it took like a week or two before I wasn’t like, raspy. So I must’ve started screaming again. And Lludd got the car stripped because I remember looking for the stain like a month later and it wasn’t there. But for a while after that, if he didn’t like what I was doing, he asked me if I wanted to come down to the garage with him for like…for like a chat, you know like a father and son chat. And I always got out of it. I think I did. I think I did. Maybe I didn’t.’

Efnisien rubbed his palms together.

‘But obviously that never happened. Because that- Because it didn’t happen. And I’m making it up. Right? False memories are a thing. Right? Shit.’

He grabbed the sleeve of his jumper and rubbed it all over his face, and when he lowered his arm, he startled to see the tissue box in front of him and Dr Gary leaning forward and holding it there.

Efnisien took several tissues at once and then stared at them.

He was so fucking cold. And he felt gross. Like he needed to shower for ages. He could still smell it, metallic and savoury. Just…a lot of blood. Like the boot was an abattoir.

‘May I…make a note?’ Dr Gary said finally. He cleared his throat. Efnisien refused to look at him. He didn’t want to hear Dr Gary telling him it was obviously fake. So instead he nodded.

The sound of typing filled the room. Efnisien drew his legs back up to his chest, and then tucked his hands into the warm space between. And then he felt trapped and restlessly dropped his legs again.

‘It’s not real,’ Efnisien repeated to himself.

‘Efnisien, I want you to name five things you can see in the room for me. Can you do that?’

‘I’m fine,’ Efnisien said, his eyes still fucking _dripping._

‘Then you’ll find it easy,’ Dr Gary said warmly.

‘Um.’ Efnisien looked around the room and then rubbed at his face. He could still see the boot of that fucking car. The blood. The little bits of gore. He frowned as he tried to focus on what was in this stupid office. He’d seen it enough fucking times. ‘Uh, like. Like. The plant. The- Your laptop. The glass of water you got me. The tissue box. My hands.’

‘Very good,’ Dr Gary said. ‘That’s fantastic. Can you name four things you can hear?’

Lludd laughing at him.

The sound of the boot slamming shut.

His own screams deafening him because the space was small and felt muffled and he couldn’t tell if he was even screaming properly so he just screamed louder and louder and louder.

He flinched when Dr Gary snapped his fingers. Dr Gary was watching him closely, but it wasn’t like the way Lludd watched him.

‘I heard that,’ Efnisien said weakly. ‘I heard.’

‘Then you only need to list three more things,’ Dr Gary said.

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Nevertheless, Efnisien, I would like it if you completed the exercise.’

‘I don’t _want_ to,’ Efnisien said, and his fists clenched, because he had no idea why he was reacting this way. It was just the dumb fucking exercise that nearly always made him feel better. ‘It’s fake isn’t it? The memory is fake, and you don’t want to tell me.’

‘I’m going to apply some _lex parsimoniae_ to this situation, and I don’t think you’re going to like the answer,’ Dr Gary said quietly.

‘I knew it,’ Efnisien said, wiping his eyes on his jeans as he raised his legs again.

‘While it’s impossible to prove whether this memory is real or not – without tangible evidence of its happening – I think it is quite easy to demonstrate that it’s more likely to be real than not.’

Efnisien pressed his lips together, then looked up, and Dr Gary’s expression was so sympathetic that he wanted to bolt.

‘We already have proof that Lludd was an extraordinarily violent and sadistic man who regularly beat Gwyn nearly to death. We have physical evidence of this, in the scans, photographs and tests taken that were used in Gwyn’s case against his parents. You have stated consistently, for three years, that Lludd hated you. You have stated – and Gwyn has agreed – that your family is capable of murder.

‘There’s no indication that you were led into this memory – you haven’t had therapy with the sorts of therapists that would create false memories, which is how they’re most often created – and I didn’t lead you at all in this session, which is also one of the ways in which false memories can be manufactured; when police or people in positions of authority, especially therapists and doctors lead the client.’

Efnisien didn’t want this answer. He was so terrified of Dr Gary telling him it was a fake memory, and yet this was…

This was way worse.

‘And,’ Dr Gary said finally, ‘I want to point out that you’ve just had an extremely visceral physiological response that was out of your control as you related the memory. It’s not conclusive in and of itself; patients who have been led by authority figures into manufacturing false memories can also have very visceral responses. But knowing what we know factually about your family, such as your aunt trying to murder you in cold blood, and Lludd near-killing his son several times, this is not only within the realm of possibility regarding your family; I’m… I confess I’m not surprised this happened.’

Efnisien could hardly breathe. Dr Gary wasn’t supposed to say any of this shit. At all. And yet Efnisien found himself hanging on Dr Gary’s every fucking word.

‘Efnisien,’ Dr Gary said, his face creasing, ‘this was a terrible thing to experience, and I am incredibly sorry that you went through it at such a young age, and so utterly alone.’

‘What?’ Efnisien said, because this… this _so_ wasn’t why he’d brought up the memory. His voice was breaking again, and he felt like he was going to sob, which also didn’t make any sense. ‘What?’

‘You were terrified,’ Dr Gary said. ‘And he knowingly terrorised you beyond your limits. You hang onto this idea that Lludd was Gwyn’s monster, but… Do you really think that’s true?’

Efnisien’s face dropped to his knee and he kept it there, even though it reminded him of having his face pressed down into the blood at the base of that goddamn car.

‘He never beat me like that,’ Efnisien said, his voice breaking. His next inhale was strained and strangled, and he hiccuped as he swallowed down a sob. ‘He never hurt me like that.’

Efnisien’s arms came up and covered his head, and he was tugging on his curls absently, because he felt the way he wanted to _cry,_ and there was a difference between getting fucking teary and absolutely losing his shit like he was still in the boot like luggage. And he wasn’t. He _wasn’t._ And Dr Gary himself had said it was impossible to prove whether it had really happened or not.

But…

‘It happened,’ he said, his voice much higher than normal. ‘It happened.’

‘Yes, I believe it did.’

‘It all happened,’ Efnisien said, his voice breaking on a sob. ‘He really killed someone.’

Dr Gary was quiet, and Efnisien wished Arden were there, and balled up as tight as he could in the stupid chair.

‘Did you ever end up telling Crielle?’ Dr Gary said finally.

‘No,’ Efnisien said, after sobbing twice and then resisting the urge to punch himself in the throat to make himself stop. ‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t know.’

‘Was that the only time he treated you like that?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, shaking his head. ‘I mean it was the only, um, the only time he did _that._ But he hated me so much. There was only, like, only one thing that stood between him and me being killed, and that was Crielle. I think. I’m pretty sure. Unless I made it up. I could’ve made it up.’

‘You could have,’ Dr Gary, but his voice was different, way gentler than usual, and Efnisien didn’t like that _at all._ ‘Do you think it’s possible that the pain that memory contains is so overwhelming, so understandably distressing, that you might be trying to find a reason to not have to look at that pain at all?’

Efnisien shuddered, shaking his head, even as he knew he was balled up like a stupid _idiot,_ and Dr Gary was right.

‘But it’s not even that bad,’ Efnisien said. ‘I was doing the _worst things_ to other people _._ Like- I just… It’s not even that bad.’

‘It’s not a competition. And what you did to others doesn’t ever invalidate what you went through, likewise, what you went through doesn’t invalidate what you did to others. But, Efnisien, do you think – just like with trying to convince yourself that you’re hallucinating the most traumatic parts of your past – you’re trying to escape how awful this is, by trying to tell yourself it isn’t so bad?’

‘I hate you _so much,’_ Efnisien spat out, his voice breaking.

‘I know,’ Dr Gary said, sighing. ‘This part of my job isn’t easy. And you don’t have to believe me, and likely, you won’t believe me, or you’ll oscillate back and forth between belief and self-invalidation. It’s _incredibly_ normal for trauma victims – all trauma victims – to fall into the rhetoric of telling themselves that what they went through isn’t so bad. It’s a way to temporarily escape just how terrible something was, how brutalised they’ve been. Of course you need places to escape to in your mind in order to deal with how they hurt you.’

_But it wasn’t that bad._

Dr Gary was right, Efnisien wasn’t ready to believe him, didn’t even think Dr Gary knew what he was talking about. But it was obvious he did. And worse, he was using that tone of voice, the kid-gloves tone that Efnisien so often hated because he needed it so much. He didn’t even know therapists could _do_ that until he met Dr Gary. The first time it happened, Efnisien felt betrayed, because it was so goddamn manipulative, and he’d yelled about it for two straight sessions until Dr Gary explained that yes, it was a technique, but that he was also a human being and had emotions and would sometimes express those emotions during a session if he felt it was beneficial to the client.

Which _also_ seemed manipulative as fuck.

Now, Efnisien wondered if Dr Gary really thought it was that bad. He sounded like he did.

‘Do you think it’s stupid?’ Efnisien said, falling back on insecure appeal. He couldn’t make himself stop crying, and two tissues were stuffed up permanently near his eyes while he rested his head on his knee. ‘Do you think I’m making a big deal out of nothing?’

‘I don’t think that.’

‘Because I could be doing this to make you feel sorry for me.’

‘I don’t think you’re doing this to elicit that kind of response.’

‘But I _could_ be,’ Efnisien said.

‘Yes, and I’ve had clients sell me extremely tragic stories to try and exculpate themselves from their history. I don’t believe you’re doing that.’

‘But I’m kind of smart. I could be doing a better job of it.’

‘You’re very intelligent. And let’s follow this line of thought for a moment. What do you have to gain from making me feel sorry for you? Do you know why you might try and manipulate me in this fashion?’

‘To… To…’ Efnisien grimaced. He’d spent three years mostly talking about how he did fucked up stuff and how he didn’t want to do it anymore and why he shouldn’t and how he badly hurt people and animals. Three years admitting it was the wrong thing to do even when he was mad about it and regretted walking away from his old life. Wanting to learn how to stop, and knowing he had to get control of his intrusive thoughts. Three years of turning up to therapy and committing to the work and hating Dr Gary and _himself_ for every step he took that put distance between himself and the way he used to think, a place that seemed comfortable at the time, and hurt more now that he looked at it.

So if he was going to sell a fucking sob story so that he didn’t have to feel so bad for all the things he’d done, he probably would’ve started doing it years ago.

‘Maybe,’ Efnisien said, his voice scratchy. ‘Maybe I’m doing it now because I’m tired of feeling like a monster all the time.’

‘Given you’re not a monster and you’re only a human being, it would be understandable that you’re tired of feeling that way,’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien frowned, he peeked up over his knees. Dr Gary was watching him calmly, hands folded in his lap. When Dr Gary saw Efnisien looking at him, he smiled a little.

‘But…’ Efnisien managed.

Saying he was a monster wouldn’t work. Dr Gary had never believed that and never accepted it either. And Dr Gary still didn’t let him off the hook when it came to the things that he’d done. Efnisien tried to wrap his mind around it, but couldn’t manage it.

‘May I ask you something?’ Dr Gary said, as Efnisien tucked his head back into his knee.

‘Uh huh.’

‘Do you think… No, let me start over. Is there a chance that you feel like you’re manipulating me through being upset over something genuinely upsetting, because…Crielle raised you to feel as though you were taking advantage of her when you were upset?’

Efnisien didn’t even dignify that with an answer. It had never seemed that way, growing up. He took a huge breath, sighing it out with the kind of shiver that came after crying hard, even though he hadn’t been. The tissues were wet, but he hadn’t sobbed much. Not much. He hated crying like that. Despair ate at him.

‘Sometimes it feels like everything we do is just…ruin the only thing that mattered to me,’ Efnisien said.

Dr Gary was quiet, and Efnisien rocked his head from side to side on his jeans briefly.

‘It has to be this way, doesn’t it?’ Efnisien said.

‘It’s all right to still value some of the things you had while growing up, or to still love the people you love. But you were raised in an abusive household which successfully convinced you that you weren’t being abused at all. It’s a house of cards that was destroying you, Efnisien. It could never continue to stand once you started to look at it more closely. I know it’s painful now. I know it’s painful. But it is with a goal of moving you away from the distress you’ve been enduring since you were a young child.’

Efnisien wished Arden were there. Even though Arden had enough of his own suffering to deal with.

‘Unfortunately,’ Dr Gary continued, ‘you will never be an unabused child. That can’t be unmade. You will have to carry that with you for the rest of your life. Some of that damage can be repaired, but the scars never leave. That’s why their abuse was so horrendous, so terrible.’

It was so tempting to point out that he’d done exactly the same thing to others. But it wasn’t exactly the same, and he’d spent years pointing how he’d abused others out to Dr Gary, and he knew it wouldn’t be constructive. He knew Dr Gary would just point out that Efnisien was using it to avoid his own shit.

But he wanted to say it so badly.

‘I’m not meant to be like this,’ Efnisien said finally.

‘Be like what?’

‘Upset. I have nothing to be upset about. They gave me everything.’ He reached weakly for the tissues and mopped at his face. Thank god Dr Gary wasn’t the kind of person to call him a fucking wimp for crying. Even if he was a wimp.

‘What do you mean by everything?’ Dr Gary said eventually.

‘Like, a home. Food. Money. A good education.’

‘Do you think that’s everything?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, confused. ‘And it’s more than what a lot of people get. So- Why?’

‘What about unconditional love? Acceptance?’ Dr Gary said.

‘But Crielle accepted me when no one else would. She accepted who I really was inside.’

Dr Gary inhaled suddenly, like he was going to say something. And even though he didn’t, Efnisien could hear words falling into the gap. He’d been seeing Dr Gary for so long he was beginning to see the structure of the thing they were building in the place whatever fucking ‘house of cards’ Efnisien was used to.

If Crielle had to teach him to be cruel to animals and people, then she never accepted him for who he really was.

But that was only if he wasn’t an awful horrible evil little monster in the first place.

And he knew that’s what he was.

‘Stop it,’ Efnisien said, even though Dr Gary hadn’t said anything at all. And then: ‘What if I can’t do it? What if I can’t do these things you keep expecting me to do? I’m a coward, you know. I’m a fucking coward. I don’t want to see all this shit you want me to see. I don’t _want_ to. Maybe I just come here because I don’t have anyone else, and I don’t want to do the work, and I don’t actually want to get better.’

Dr Gary took a long breath and sighed it out, and Efnisien risked looking at him, and was shocked at the… concern? Sympathy? He’d expected Dr Gary to look expressionless, but he didn’t.

‘Sometimes,’ Dr Gary said, ‘therapy is about getting ‘better.’ Maybe there’s a baseline someone is trying to return to. Perhaps they’ve been through a divorce and they want to feel happy like they used to, and know they need therapy to access that. They never return to who they used to be, but they understand what shape they’re growing towards, because they have a sort of blueprint inside of themselves. They understand their own potential to be happy because they’ve been that happy before.

‘But sometimes, especially in the case of very early onset child abuse and child sexual abuse – _especially_ when it’s severe – people don’t have a blueprint to fall back on. They don’t know what it means to be happy or content. They don’t know the experience of acceptance or unconditional love, it might even be intimidating or frightening. Everything they want becomes incredibly threatening, because it shakes apart the foundation that’s helped them to survive, and there’s no blueprint to fall back on, no understanding of the potential to get ‘better’ because they don’t even know what it means. In those cases, it’s understandable that the client doesn’t want to get better sometimes. They don’t understand exactly what that will entail, what it will cost, and the concept is destabilising in the first place.’

‘You think I’m in the last category,’ Efnisien said tiredly.

‘I believe that this process is extremely threatening to your foundational beliefs and it’s natural and _understandable_ to be wary of that, or to waver back and forth, or to try something new for an hour before returning to what’s familiar. But even when it’s a draining and terrifying process, you have an immense capacity to experience your present in new and innovative ways. To use the metaphor, you’re drawing your own blueprint, and it’s a remarkable one. Whether it’s saving that snail. Or spending time with Arden. It might seem hopeless at times, or like all we do is ruin what you value, but you have found new values.’

‘I guess,’ Efnisien said. ‘I’m seeing Arden this Sunday.’

‘Are you?’

‘Mmhm. I’m not going back to choir on Saturday. It’s too hard. I hate it. I’ll try another group or something. I just can’t- Look. Look- I’m sorry, I just can’t keep… I can’t keep doing that. They all- They’re fine I guess, but I can’t.’

‘That’s all right,’ Dr Gary said. Efnisien squinted at him doubtfully, but Dr Gary shrugged. ‘You tried to go back, you made a real effort. I’m proud of you for doing that. But even if it was going well, I wouldn’t advise you to spend the next two days doing things that are draining for you. Sessions like this sometimes need a recovery period and it’s wise to stay aware of that. If you know it’s too much to go to choir on Saturday night, don’t go. What do you think you’ll do instead?’

‘Work maybe,’ Efnisien said. ‘Read. Arden brought books over! And he let me buy them on the website, because I’m still…being really weak about walking to his bookshop. Actually I- Fuck. We can talk about that next time I guess.’

‘We can,’ Dr Gary said. ‘It’s worth being gentle with yourself about some of these things. Post-trauma isn’t something you wish or think away in an instant, even if you understand the logic behind what’s happening. Trauma happens to _all_ of you, not just your logical processes. Even if you get the logic back on track and know you’re likely to be safe walking to Arden’s bookshop and back again, your body will take significantly longer to understand that. You don’t need to force that recovery.’

‘But it’s regression, right?’

‘It’s a partial regression, yes, which is normal and to be expected. And you’re still going to buy your groceries, aren’t you? And you went walking in that forest with Arden. And even tried going out with Bridge and the group from the choir. That saying: ‘two steps forward, one step back’ – think of it more like, two steps back in one area, and in plenty of others you’re racing ahead.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Like dogshit, actually,’ Efnisien said, smiling a little.

Dr Gary also smiled, and nodded like he wasn’t surprised. ‘It’s been a hard session.’

‘Has it? You don’t think the…the…memory-hallucination thing is just stupid? Just me getting worked up over nothing? I was really bad to Lludd. I treated him like shit.’

‘You were a child who was incited into misbehaving,’ Dr Gary said. ‘But _nothing_ excuses the way he treated you. Nothing. It is not only appropriate to be worked up and severely distressed over how he treated you, that sort of event has far more of a profound impact on a child’s psyche than you probably realise, Efnisien. I don’t think any of what happened today – or the memory itself – is stupid.’

Efnisien chewed on his upper lip. He wanted to agree, but he couldn’t.

‘And parents don’t just give their kids meds and stuff… like Crielle did?’ Efnisien said, just to be sure.

‘No,’ Dr Gary said. ‘That was another type of child abuse you were made to endure without knowing any better.’

‘Do you hate that I’m fishing? Like, getting you to tell me these things weren’t good after all?’

‘No,’ Dr Gary said, his smile broadening, even though his gaze softened. ‘Not at all. In light of no one else telling you things like this for the duration of your life, someone probably should, don’t you think? And if you can’t tell yourself these things yet – because you’re still learning – you can let me do it for you in the meantime.’

For some reason, that made Efnisien choke up all over again, and he hid his face against his knee.

‘What’s Stupidhead doing?’ Dr Gary asked. ‘Have you thought about him this session?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, because he almost never thought about Stupidhead in sessions. He still felt guilty for tearing him apart the other night. But unconsciously he checked in, and the octopus was there, floating and forgiving, gently wheeling about in the dark. And Efnisien imagined himself sitting there and watched him, and his shoulders felt less hunched, his body felt less tight. ‘He’s okay.’

‘Is he? That’s good.’

‘I don’t even think they can survive at the bottom of the Mariana Trench,’ Efnisien said. ‘You know.’

‘That just means he’s a survivor then,’ Dr Gary said.

‘I guess.’

They wrapped up the session soon after that, and Efnisien could tell Dr Gary was both really pleased with the work they’d done – even though Efnisien felt like he’d mostly cried over some stupid fucking memory-hallucination – and concerned at the same time. He kept making sure that Efnisien knew he needed rest and be careful and remember that he could call Dr Gary if he needed to. When Efnisien asked if he was okay to still see Arden, Dr Gary nodded firmly, and that helped too.

As he walked out of Dr Gary’s office, the door closing behind him, he looked at Mack and then realised from her wide eyes that it was _so_ fucking obvious he’d been crying. His face was probably red and blotchy and ugly. He forced what was the world’s most awkward smile, then kept his head down and walked towards the door.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Bye, Efnisien.’

He tensed, then looked over his shoulder. He didn’t think she was allowed to do things like that unless he said something first. He’d stopped talking to her to give her a break from having to respond to people she didn’t want to.

And for a couple of sessions she hadn’t said anything at all, and he was sure that confirmed his theory that she hated him, she hated her job.

‘Yeah,’ he said, something hard softening inside of him. ‘Bye Mack. Hope your day’s good.’

‘You too,’ she said, smiling as he closed the clinic door behind him. He winced at the sky’s brightness as he stepped onto the threshold, and then made his way home.


	42. Starved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a hot minute because much like Efnisien, my mental health is sometimes terribad. BUT! Here we are, with another chapter I have Strong Feelings (TM) about and I hope y'all can share in them with me. Also Arden's here, because we need some Arden.

Efnisien felt an actual sense of relief once he stepped into Arden’s home, even if he didn’t know what they’d be doing today.

The last two days after therapy had been heavy, mostly filled with sleeping. He’d woken on Saturday night long enough to feel guilty for not going to choir, imagining the way Bridge had looked at him from the theatre hall where they sung, and then fell asleep once more. The moments when he was too tired to do much more than lay in bed, but couldn’t sleep, he and Arden had engaged in small chat exchanges. Enough that Arden knew Efnisien had a hard therapy session, though Efnisien couldn’t bring himself to say why.

‘Today’s going to look simple,’ Arden said quietly. He was wearing a terrible shirt that he managed to make look good, _somehow._ A bright red short-sleeved monstrosity that was form-fitting, with a deliberately crooked bow-tie printed at the collar in shiny black ink. On the back it said, _Too Classy For You_ in Comic Sans, which Efnisien thought made the shirt illegal. Where did he even _find_ them? ‘But if it’s not, or you find it too much, use one of your words, okay?’

‘I mean you basically said last time was simple,’ Efnisien said, looking at Isabelle, who was staring at him from where she stood beside Arden’s leg, her tail wagging furiously.

He imagined that he was the kind of person who could bend down and hold his hand out, and she’d come over and sniff his fingers, and then he’d pat her head, and that would be it. That would be all.

But even standing there, even wanting to be able to pet her so badly and thinking that maybe he _could_ do it, he kept seeing ghosts of what he’d done to other dogs. It didn’t seem fair that she’d regard him with that happy, bright face, after everything he’d done. There was no way to explain to her that she shouldn’t trust him. She just did.

He didn’t want to ever put her in danger, and so he didn’t bend down and hold his hand out. Just in case.

He didn’t think he was a threat to dogs anymore, but why risk it?

‘I did say that,’ Arden said, smiling. ‘And I didn’t say today would be simple, I said it would _look_ simple. Today’s going to be challenging.’

Efnisien looked at Arden in alarm, and Arden’s smile didn’t change.

‘Dr Gary- I mean Dr Gary kind of said I shouldn’t do anything too tiring.’

‘Mm, I know,’ Arden said, walking into the kitchen and getting two glasses out of the cabinet like he always did. ‘I’m glad you’re reminding me of that. I’ll be keeping a close eye on you, and it’s one of those… I have a feeling that today will be challenging and then might become relaxing? I don’t know. This is why we have safewords, while I’m still getting to know how you react to things. And we don’t have to do anything at all today. We can like…hang out, watch TV.’

‘No, I- I want to,’ Efnisien said softly, looking down.

It was embarrassing to say that much, and even that hid how much he found himself stumbling across thinking about what they did last Sunday. How many times he’d thought of kneeling in his own stupid fucking apartment.

‘Yeah?’ Arden said, his voice gaining that tone to it, the one that made Efnisien simultaneously go on high alert and feel like he was caught out and under some kind of spotlight. ‘You like what we do together already, baby? You can tell me you do.’

‘That’s- You’re- _So_ unfair,’ he managed.

‘I know,’ Arden said, and Efnisien looked up to see the way Arden was smiling at him. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I love when people can just straight up say they love it, but there’s something pretty delicious about someone who knows they want it, but are touched by enough shame that it kills them to say they enjoy it.’

_You’re a sadist,_ Efnisien wanted to complain, but Arden had already established that he kind of was. He’d called this ‘soft humiliation’ when they’d negotiated the form. He had terms for nearly everything that he did. He’d even explained a lot of it, and Efnisien still felt frequently lost and on the back foot. He wondered if that was how he would have felt even if he did know more of the terms and what they meant.

‘All right,’ Arden said, after walking into the lounge and placing both glasses of water on the table by the couch and then sending Isabelle to her mat. He walked back and faced Efnisien, reaching out and grasping his arms firmly. Arden studied his face for a long time, and Efnisien didn’t know what to say, resisting the urge to look away.

When Arden pulled him in for an embrace, it was a relief. And Efnisien absolutely wasn’t counting, he told himself it didn’t matter that it was two hugs close together, and that it still didn’t feel like some momentous thing. Arden just hugged him like it was _normal._

He smelled good too, like that cologne from last time. Efnisien didn’t know what it was. Crielle was much better at things like that. She could pick a perfume or cologne almost absently, to the point where going into regular shops was impossible for her, because the bad synthetic scents made her get headaches. Whatever Arden was using, he knew it was high quality, and he wanted to know what it was called.

Not that he could go out and buy it, because that would be suspicious as fuck. He couldn’t afford it anyway.

‘I have two questions for you,’ Arden said softly. ‘After that, we’re going to start, and you’re going to be good for me, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, Arden,’ Efnisien said.

He always felt like it started as soon as Arden said it was _about_ to start. He could feel his mind starting to lock into gear. He internally ran through things he wasn’t supposed to do like talk back or even just chat in general, tease for the sake of it, work against Arden or touch him without permission. He wouldn’t do the last one anyway, whether they were in a scene or not. He remembered from their negotiation that they were in this together, and he remembered from their first scene that this would probably be…

Well, it might look simple on the outside, but it was probably going to be challenging.

‘The first thing,’ Arden said softly, not letting go of him, ‘is there anything you want to change or add to your limits today? Anything out of bounds on the form that you said would be okay?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said after thinking about it. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Good,’ Arden said. ‘The second, I’d like to tell me your safewords and what they mean, okay? And then we’ll begin.’

So Efnisien ran through them, blue and yellow and green, their meanings. Arden stepped back from him and Efnisien felt like it was far too soon. His hands tensed to stop himself from reaching out and grabbing him. It wasn’t allowed. It was an easy rule to remember, Crielle didn’t like being touched out of nowhere either.

‘Hang tight,’ Arden said, smiling at him as he walked across the lounge. ‘I’m just going to set up. We’ll work in here again today, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said.

Arden pulled out the pink cushion from last time – Efnisien’s chest clenched in response – and what looked like a black yoga mat. He then stood in his lounge, turning sometimes, looking around, and then finally put down the pink cushion, and rolled out the black yoga mat behind it.

He walked up to Efnisien and placed a hand on the small of his back.

‘Come on,’ Arden said, pushing lightly. ‘Let’s get you kneeling.’

Efnisien still had a moment where his legs wouldn’t quite move. He didn’t know if he was grateful or annoyed or taken aback that Arden had decided to help him over already, without waiting to see if he’d stall out. He didn’t understand how he could feel like he was ready for the scene and then suddenly not feel ready at all.

Arden’s fingers nudged him again and he took a step, then another, and then it was really only a small number of steps before he was awkwardly kneeling, pressing his lips together and feeling shivery but not quite cold as Arden stood over him, watching.

‘Stay there, sweetheart,’ Arden said, as he walked into the kitchen. He opened one of the cupboards, but Efnisien couldn’t see him, he was facing an empty fireplace, the end of the couch, and what looked like a chew toy by the TV. He didn’t want to look over his shoulder. He hadn’t been told not to, but he felt like that would be breaking the rules somehow.

Arden returned and put some containers on the table, but Efnisien couldn’t see them because of the way he was positioned.

And then Arden knelt behind him on the black yoga mat, because his knees were either side of Efnisien’s hips.

_What...the hell?_

‘All right,’ Arden said to himself, shuffling closer. Efnisien felt the pressure of the insides of Arden’s knees against his hips. Arden absently placed one hand just above Efnisien’s hip, like he needed to brace himself, and then the touch vanished.

The touch to his upper arms was unexpected, and Arden’s palms curled over his biceps easily, the grip warm.

‘I want you to rest your hands in your lap and lace your fingers together,’ Arden said quietly. ‘You said you were interested in being tied up, so today we’re going to try this as a sort of preliminary bondage. You can’t unlace your fingers unless I tell you, or you safeword, all right?’

Efnisien stared down at his hands, and then slowly laced his fingers together. It was something he did all the time in therapy, but he knew from experience that after a while his hands got sweaty, and he liked to unlock them too.

And then Arden pressed close, his chest against Efnisien’s back, and he ran his hands down Efnisien’s arms all the way to his hands and checked. In response, Efnisien stared wide eyed at the fireplace, because Arden was _close._ And his thumbs were checking over Efnisien’s wrists and fingers, and then sliding back up again to his shoulders, and that was a lot. That was…

Fuck, what was he supposed to do?

Arden’s fingers moved to the sides of Efnisien’s neck, fingertips resting gently, and then they met in the middle beneath his curly hair, and slid down over his jumper, bisecting his spine before ending up at his lower back, just above the hem of his jeans. It was embarrassing but Efnisien couldn’t stop his tingling shiver in response.

Arden’s hands tucked beneath his jumper and shirt in an easy, shocking movement, and then Efnisien had two bare hands resting on his back, a little cooler than his skin, and so alien compared to what he was used to that he went very still. 

_‘Wh-?’_

‘Be quiet, angel,’ Arden said softly. 

Efnisien inhaled sharply and then his teeth clacked shut when Arden smoothed his palms up over Efnisien’s back. 

‘God,’ Arden said, ‘you feel great, sunshine. It’s going to be awesome to get to know you like this.’

Efnisien couldn’t even envy that Arden was so confident because his brain was just heavy static. It was like he was distressed and craving at the same time, his mouth opening, unable to parse the touch at all.

‘Easy,’ Arden said, drawing the word out. ‘You’re shaking, baby. Are you nervous?’ 

_What are you doing?_ Efnisien wanted to ask. He hung from some suspended place, his fingers digging into themselves, locked in front of him on his lap. His breaths were tiny mouthfuls, each one hardly enough. And Arden’s hands moved over his ribs, his spine, under his shoulders, rucking up the fabric a little. 

‘I asked you a question, angel,’ Arden said sweetly. 

‘God,’ Efnisien managed. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why are you sorry?’ 

‘I can’t concentrate at all.’ 

‘No?’ Arden said, sounding pleased instead of upset. He curled his fingers and dragged his nails down either side of Efnisien’s spine, and in response – involuntary, and too fast to call back – a short, low syllable sounded in the back of his throat. Efnisien’s cheeks burned, but between trying to control his breathing, trying to understand all the sensations, he couldn’t get a handle on himself. He was supposed to be composed, wasn’t he?

‘Well,’ Arden said, ‘it’s a crime that pretty much no one gets to touch you this way, when you’re so responsive.’

_Fucking Jesus motherfucking Christ,_ Efnisien managed in the back of his head, but his lips were pressed together, because Arden was smoothing his palms back up, back down, and then gently digging his thumbs in, like he was testing the muscles underneath Efnisien’s skin. Efnisien half-wanted to say he didn’t have any muscles to bother with these days, but he liked the pushing, digging movement too much, and besides, he couldn’t _speak._

Arden withdrew one of his hands, and then shifted behind Efnisien, kneeling up, or leaning in, Efnisien couldn’t quite tell. Fingertips tickled the back of his neck as his hair was moved to the side, and then Efnisien’s voice broke on a whimper when lips pressed coolly to his neck, over the space Arden revealed.

Absently, overloaded and spinning apart, he unlocked his hands, one reaching ahead for nothing at all, the other flailing in the air. Arden’s response was swift, he kept his nose pressed to the back of Efnisien’s neck, but grasped both of his arms in a tight grip.

_‘No,’_ he said.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Efnisien said in a rush, even as he pulled his arms together to lock his fingers once more. Arden’s hands never left his arms, and when he laced his fingers together, Arden knelt over him – chest resting against the top of Efnisien’s shoulders – and ran his fingers carefully over Efnisien’s. It reminded him of how he used to run his fingers lightly over the keys of the piano, one after the other, without pressing hard enough to make a sound.

But Efnisien was trembling, he’d forgotten how to breathe properly. He couldn’t tell if he was afraid or if he liked it or if he was upset or if he was relieved. It hurt, somehow, to have Arden close to him like this.

‘I’m _really_ sorry,’ Efnisien said automatically, ‘I’m-’

And then hands no longer over his knuckles and fingers, but one lightly resting over his mouth, and the other resting over his eyes. He wasn’t blind, he could still see, Arden’s fingers were splayed.

It was symbolic, more than anything else. Efnisien could still talk if he wanted to. But he felt muted all the same. Better than that, he felt a tiny part of him relax, even though he was still so charged up he thought he might shake apart.

‘Okay,’ Arden said, his voice firm. ‘Settle down, sweetheart. You don’t have to say anything, in fact, I don’t want you to, unless you’re going to use a safeword, okay? Do you need to use a safeword? Do you need a break?’

Efnisien was shaking his head before he’d even thought it through. The idea that Arden would stop touching him now was like a knife beneath his skin.

‘But it’s a lot, isn’t it?’ Arden said.

Efnisien nodded.

‘I know,’ Arden said, his fingers shifting gently on Efnisien’s face. ‘I know it is, baby. You don’t need to speak. I’m not expecting you to do anything, except learn how to receive someone else touching you, okay? That’s all. I’m not going to hurt you.’

And yet hearing that, it _hurt._ Efnisien didn’t know why. His eyes screwed up. Arden was everywhere, and Efnisien thought he’d pay to experience this again. With actual money. And that hurt too. Nothing Arden was doing physically was painful, but it was still…somehow painful.

‘Look at that!’ Arden said abruptly. ‘You’re barely breathing, sunshine! Let’s do something about that, okay?’

Efnisien nodded, but he had no idea what to do about the fact that his lungs weren’t working, and he barely cared about it anyway.

But Arden leaned back again and slid his hands from Efnisien’s face, to his neck, and then down and under his shirt once more. Efnisien wondered if he’d ever feel Arden’s mouth on his neck again. His lips had been smooth, a little wet, and gentle but also somehow decisive, like Arden knew exactly where he wanted to kiss Efnisien’s neck and why. It was like Crielle, but also not. She’d never kissed him like that.

Hands under his shirt and jumper again, resting at the base of his back, just above the hem of his jeans. Efnisien felt dizzy, could still feel the echo of that hand over his mouth, the splayed hand over his eyes. The only place he felt contained was where he locked his hands together and where Arden touched him.

‘Okay,’ Arden said, ‘breathe in for me, nice and deep if you can.’

So Efnisien tried, but as he did, Arden dragged his hands up Efnisien’s back following the movement of his inhale. And when Efnisien practically choked on his breath and then held it, Arden’s hands stopped moving. Yeah, no, he was never going to be able to breathe normally through this. He’d given up in advance. He’d written a formal letter about it in his head, he was fucked.

‘Breathe out,’ Arden said, ‘nice and slow.’

Efnisien’s breath shook and stuttered, and as he exhaled, Arden’s hands moved down his back, resting on the hem of his jeans comfortably, fingertips pressed against his skin.

‘Again,’ Arden said.

So Efnisien breathed in, managed a deeper breath this time, though his lungs felt kind of like they were going to explode. And Arden’s hands rested flat on either side of his spine at the top of the breath, over his shoulder blades, and Efnisien’s eyes were shut tight.

Because something about it hurt, even though Arden wasn’t hurting him.

‘Breathe out,’ Arden said.

Efnisien started to exhale, and Arden’s hands dragged down his back, warm and welcome and _perfect._

To Efnisien’s horror, something twisted hard in his chest, splintering into pieces, and he burst into tears.


	43. Soothed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like holy shit though, I am completely _blown away_ by how everyone responded to the last chapter, like thank you so much for the good fucking food, I am like... I am slain. SLAIN. 
> 
> So here have another chapter because the response to the last one was Very Motivational even to my depressed!walnut!brain!

‘Oh, baby,’ Arden crooned, which didn’t help with the whole crying thing _at all._ Efnisien raised his locked up hands to his face, but didn’t unlace his fingers, and Arden was already moving. Moving _away._ Efnisien was making a fool of himself and this was so stupid because he hadn’t even cried like this in Dr Gary’s office. He was just losing his shit, and Arden was…

…Arden was in front of him, pulling him close, murmuring something under his breath that Efnisien’s loud sobs were drowning out.

‘Look at that,’ Arden said, ‘you didn’t even unlace your fingers. You’re such a good boy.’

_Not fucking helping._

He gave up trying to think of how to explain why he was reacting this way, to apologise for it, when he didn’t understand it himself. He leaned heavily into Arden’s body, whose arms were tight around him, his own locked fists pressed against his chest as he bawled like an idiot child. Arden smoothed his hands over Efnisien’s back, stroking him over his jumper and shirt easily, firmly.

One of Arden’s hands moved to his hair, sinking into the curls and cupping the back of his head, holding him close.

‘Sweetheart,’ Arden said softly. ‘My sweet flower, that’s it, you’re fine. You can cry. No one’s going to hurt you. And look at you keeping your hands locked together the entire time. You’re so clever and good.’

Efnisien’s mouth was open against Arden’s stupid red shirt. His nose was running. His eyes were fucking streaming. Some of the sobs felt so violent it was more like throwing up, and Arden stayed there, and didn’t move, and kept saying soft things to him which never helped – they were definitely making him cry _more_ – but also sounded amazing.

The storm of it eventually eased, Efnisien’s sobs subsiding into lost hiccupping noises, his inhales and exhales shuddering heavily.

‘Are we stopping now?’ Efnisien said, his voice broken and torn. ‘Because I ruined it?’

‘Shhh,’ Arden said. ‘You haven’t ruined anything. We’re not stopping unless you need to.’

‘But-’

‘Shhh,’ Arden said. ‘You’re going to stay like this for a few minutes longer, and then I’m going to get you some tissues, help you clean up, and we’re going to keep going. Remember when I said today would look simple, but would feel challenging? Always kind of… had a feeling that you weren’t used to being touched. It’s okay, baby, it’s okay to find it overwhelming. If you hate it, we can stop.’

Efnisien shook his head. He was still leaking tears, both relieved and overwhelmed at the idea that they weren’t going to stop, but also exhausted, faintly aware of the session he’d had with Dr Gary lurking in the back of his head. The memories he’d talked about didn’t feel any further away after that session. He pressed closer to Arden absently, and Arden’s hand tightened against his scalp and back in response.

He tensed when he heard heavy panting next to him. Isabelle had come over.

‘No, Izzy,’ Arden said easily, a smile in his voice. ‘He’s okay. You can go back to your mat, now. Go on. Good girl.’

She turned and trotted back into the kitchen, and Efnisien sniffed, then sniffed again. He felt stupidly clogged up. It had to be so fucking ugly. He was probably red and splotchy and awful-looking.

‘She was checking on you,’ Arden said, rubbing Efnisien’s back firmly. ‘She’s just that kind of dog.’

Efnisien wanted to say: _She’s so good,_ but he hadn’t safeworded, and he didn’t feel like they were supposed to be having a normal conversation. He didn’t want to, either. The rules were…safe. He didn’t have to speak. And if he didn’t have to speak, he didn’t have to apologise for being a fucking idiot baby. And if Arden hated it, he could safeword too, because he’d safeworded last time when he felt uncomfortable.

Which meant Arden didn’t feel uncomfortable, and Efnisien didn’t have to apologise.

At least not now. He could do it later.

‘Okay,’ Arden said, his hand shifting in Efnisien’s hair and pulling it aside again. ‘Do me a favour and look at the TV properly?’

Efnisien frowned, feeling a bit out of it. But he did it all the same, and then Arden’s lips were on his neck again, the kisses gentle. A little shocked syllable fell out of his mouth in response, his eyes wide and blurry. He blinked rapidly to try and clear his vision, then gasped when he felt Arden’s tongue against his skin.

It was the perfect moment to _say_ something, but Arden didn’t want him to talk. Efnisien heard what was happening in the absence of his own voice. Heard his own hair being moved out of the way. Heard Arden’s mouth shift, though the sounds were faint. Heard his own shaking breathing. None of that was as important as how it felt, because Crielle had never done this, and it was something that raced through his skin like small bolts of lightning just underneath, waking up his blood, his nerves.

Arden smiled against Efnisien’s neck, there was the faintest scrape of teeth which didn’t hurt at all, but still had his eyes widening in alarm, and then Arden pulled back and let Efnisien’s hair go.

‘I’m going back into the kitchen for a second, okay?’ Arden said, rubbing circles into Efnisien’s shoulders with his thumbs. ‘When I do that, I want you to stand up for a little while. I don’t want your legs stiffening up like they did last time. Don’t unlace your fingers though.’

Efnisien nodded, and Arden nodded with him, still smiling when he stood and walked away.

Efnisien sat there for a few seconds feeling dumbfounded, then pushed up carefully, finding it bizarre as fuck that he was still in Arden’s loungeroom and actually not much time had gone by. He held his locked hands up close to his chest and wanted to rub his face on something. Awkwardly he reached up and tried smearing the wetness away with the knuckles of his crossed thumbs, but that wasn’t really doing much.

When Arden returned a couple of minutes later, he was holding a small facecloth. He folded it and draped it over his own shoulder, then reached out to Efnisien.

‘All right, down you go. Back to kneeling, sunshine.’

Efnisien nodded and found it weirdly easier this time, even though every movement felt uncoordinated and he couldn’t use his hands to brace himself. Arden crouched in front of him and reached out with the facecloth, and started wiping at his face. The cloth was warm, Efnisien thought he should feel embarrassed that Arden was doing this for him, but he didn’t mind it. After a few seconds he found himself turning into the cloth, presenting the parts of his face that Arden hadn’t gotten to yet.

‘Look at you, being so helpful,’ Arden said, his voice low. ‘Do you need to blow your nose?’

He did. As he nodded, he had a horrible suspicion that Arden wasn’t going to let him blow his own nose. And he was right, because a few seconds later, a tissue was pressed against his nose. It smelled faintly of eucalyptus.

He narrowed his eyes at Arden. And Arden just watched him with an easy, calm expression on his face.

‘Go on,’ Arden said, faintly teasing.

Efnisien winced, he inhaled through his mouth like he was going to, then stopped at the last minute.

‘Oh, sweetheart,’ Arden crooned. ‘None of this stuff grosses me out, you know. And you’ll feel so much better when you can breathe through your nose. Come on, the sooner you do it, the sooner you’ll get it out of the way.’

And so Efnisien blew his nose into the tissue that Arden was holding. Then did it again into a second tissue and wanted to crawl into a hole, his eyes shut tight. But Arden simply wiped his nose clean, grasped his shoulder firmly and warmly and then got up and put the tissues in the bin, and washed his hands. Efnisien did feel better now that he could breathe through his nose, his face clean.

When Arden returned, he tapped gently at the side of Efnisien’s face, prompting him to open his eyes. The glass of water was right there, Arden holding it, and Efnisien ground his teeth together.

‘If you try bondage,’ Arden said soberly, ‘you are going to need me to help you with these things. Are you really so mad that someone’s trying to take care of you?’

Efnisien stared at him, then frowned when Arden tapped the side of his face once more. It was so obviously a prompting for an answer, and he looked down, feeling caught out and tired and like everything was hard.

‘Dr Gary’s gonna be mad at you,’ Efnisien said, his voice croaky.

Arden’s palm rested against Efnisien’s cheek, his fingers fanning out over his ear and into his hair.

‘Is he? Am I pushing you too hard, sweetface? You can say yellow or blue any time you want.’

‘But…’ He shivered, he wanted to go back to what they were doing before.

‘All right,’ Arden said, his voice firming. Efnisien didn’t like that at all. ‘I’m going to point something out, and you’re probably going to get a bit annoyed at me for it. But this, my flower, is you trying to take control of the scene. You responded to a direct question by telling me your therapist was going to be mad at me. And when I asked you if I was pushing you too hard, you didn’t give me a clear answer.’

Efnisien looked at him, stricken, and Arden’s expression was serious, which just made everything _worse._ He thought Arden would cut him some slack after he’d just…just cried all over him. Arden’s whole shirt sleeve on the left hand side was still wet.

‘I know,’ Arden said. ‘I’m being mean. But that’s just a little bit my job right now. Your job is to work with me. You do that by either making a call to safeword, and I _know_ that’s hard, baby, I know, but that’s part of the responsibility you take on when you agree to do this. Your job is also to think about what you’re saying and doing, not in order to punish yourself, but to pay attention to the give and take between us. I _know_ it’s tempting to kind of…make it seem like everything’s normal again, because of what happened, but we’re still in this scene together. I want to make it good for you. You have to help me do that, okay? I really believe you can. You’re really good at this, especially when you let yourself be.’

Efnisien stared at him, feeling like he’d been punished somehow, wanting to apologise and aware that – now that Arden had pointed it out – he had been trying to go back to some kind of normal space. And if he wanted that, he had to safeword. And if he didn’t want that, then he had to…

He had to drink the water. And he had to kind of shut up about it.

_I want you to be nice to me,_ he thought.

But up until that point, Arden had been really nice to him. That was kind of what set this whole thing off in the first place.

Efnisien sniffed a little, then nodded. His eyelids fluttered when Arden stroked his cheek with his thumb, giving him that gentle, accepting smile that he had.

‘You going to drink some water for me?’ Arden said.

‘Yes,’ Efnisien said roughly. ‘Yes, Arden.’

‘So good,’ Arden said warmly, then pressed the rim of the glass to Efnisien’s mouth. And Efnisien drank the water, his eyes downcast because he couldn’t look at Arden. The water was cool, refreshing, and when Arden moved the glass away and put it back on the table, Efnisien realised he was grateful for the water. He wanted to say thank you, but didn’t know if that was allowed, so didn’t say anything.

Arden came back, crouched in front of him and took up Efnisien’s locked up hands, looking over his knuckles.

‘Nothing’s numb? Tingling?’ Arden said.

‘No, Arden,’ Efnisien said.

Arden’s brown eyes studied his, then he nodded. He moved to Efnisien’s side, sitting cross-legged. Efnisien decided that Arden’s habit of getting up and doing whatever he wanted all the time instead of staying in one spot probably came in handy for things like this. Arden placed one hand at his lower back, over his clothing, like he was steadying Efnisien. His other hand went between Efnisien’s shoulder blades.

‘Lean the top part of your body forward, but stay kneeling, with your shins on the ground. I want you to find a way to get your forehead on the carpet so that it’s comfortable for you. You can keep your hands at your chest, or stretch them above your head. It’s your decision.’

Arden’s hand at his shoulders pushed him forwards with a surprising amount of strength, and Efnisien’s locked hands dropped down to stop his chest and shoulders from hitting the ground clumsily. He realised that his belly would be resting on his thighs, there wouldn’t be much room for his hands, which would be pressed up against his chest or collarbones. So he stretched his arms forward past his head, grunting softly at the way his muscles pulled.

And then his forehead was on the floor, and the hand at his lower back swept over his spine a few times in long, languid strokes. The hand at his shoulders moved to the back of his neck, and pushed down. The pressure was unexpected. Efnisien would really have to fight to be able to lift his head back up, and his forehead creased in confusion and apprehension.

‘Just like this,’ Arden said. ‘Just for a little while. You don’t have to do anything except this, baby. And you’re doing really, really well.’

It was weird as hell, that’s what it was. Arden’s fingers were curled in, digging in the way they could at his waist and back, but at his neck instead. It was obvious that Arden wanted him to stay right there, and Efnisien waited for a few minutes, waited to see what would happen next.

But nothing happened.

His shoulders relaxed a little more, he took deeper breaths, though it was hard to stay in this position. He had to concentrate on it. The carpet was scratchy against his forehead, he could feel the stretch in his upper arms and shoulders, and he felt weirdly exposed even though most of the parts of him that were vulnerable were facing the ground. Arden couldn’t even see his expression.

He didn’t know how much time was passing, but he closed his eyes and felt like he was kind of giving himself up to whatever was happening. Arden seemed happy enough, and Efnisien could just say later that he didn’t really understand the point of some of this shit, but he didn’t mind doing it.

A minute later, he shifted his arms, bent them more at the elbows, and some of the strain in his upper arms eased. He sighed and then swallowed as Arden’s hand at his neck eased up to the back of his head instead. Fingers dragging heavily over his scalp felt really fucking good, and Efnisien held back the sound he nearly made in response.

‘Don’t open your eyes, stay as relaxed as possible,’ Arden said, his voice low.

Fingers tightening in his hair until Arden had a solid handful. It didn’t hurt much, but it pulled heavily, and then Arden was dragging his head back so slowly, Efnisien didn’t realise until his forehead started to leave the carpet.

His first instinct was to resist whatever was happening, and he tensed.

Arden’s other hand at his neck, drawing small little circles. ‘Relax, sweetheart,’ Arden said.

Efnisien couldn’t help the small sound he made then, and Arden only waited. Efnisien had to concentrate, focusing on trying to relax his neck. Arden didn’t move again until he had, and he wondered if the fingers tracing circles and little patterns over the back of his neck could feel when his muscles went lax.

That heavy pressure again, pulling his head. It was so hard not to tense up. He managed for another few seconds, and then his whole upper body locked up, his arms tensing.

‘Shhh,’ Arden said pre-emptively. But he also guided Efnisien’s head back down to the carpet, and his other hand increased pressure at the back of his neck, keeping him there. ‘There we go. A bit longer, okay, baby? You’re doing great.’

Efnisien didn’t know if he was, but now he had both of Arden’s hands on him – one in his hair, the other at his neck – and he didn’t know how he managed to feel surrounded because of that, but he did. Maybe because his thighs were pressed to his abdomen. Maybe because of the position. Maybe something about Arden.

Efnisien tried to focus on staying relaxed, but it was bizarrely easier to just…relax and not think about it. Some of the thoughts he was having made no sense. Like he thought life might be easier if he could go around with Arden touching some part of him all the time, which was impossible, but…felt nice to think about. And then he thought he was a little like Isabelle on her mat, except not quite, because Arden was pinning him down. But the comparison still made him smile.

After that he lost track of time because it didn’t seem as important. The position wasn’t super comfortable, but his legs and hands weren’t numb or tingling, and he kind of liked the discomfort of Arden’s hand at his neck, in his hair. Sometimes Arden shifted, his fingers would move a centimetre at his neck, or would scrape over his scalp. They were small changes, but Efnisien was hypersensitive to them all. He focused on that, and on his breathing, because it made the position a lot easier to deal with.

‘Okay,’ Arden said quietly, to himself, and tightened his hand in Efnisien’s hair, before pulling his neck back again. Efnisien kept his eyes closed, found it easier this time to stay relaxed through having his head pulled up and then back. And Arden was talking to him quietly, soothingly.

‘That’s good, baby, look at you, staying so relaxed for me. God, you’re wonderful, that’s it exactly. Just let me. It’s easier now, isn’t it?’

Efnisien could tell he didn’t have to say anything. Arden pulled his head all the way back until he could feel the strain in his neck, his throat, and swallowing was difficult because of it. Arden kept him in place and rubbed slow circles over his back, and Efnisien didn’t care what happened anymore. After the crying, after the fractiousness of before, it felt really good to not be caught and tense and upset.

‘Okay,’ Arden said, lowering Efnisien’s head back to the ground carefully, as slowly as he’d raised it.

He moved his hands from the back of Efnisien’s head and neck, and began pulling Efnisien’s jumper and shirt up, exposing his skin. That wasn’t alarming at first, until Efnisien felt an inch of cool air on his belly and twitched helplessly. He wanted to let go of his hands, he wanted to hold into the jumper and keep himself protected.

‘I can’t see your front in this position,’ Arden said, still inching up the jumper and shirt. ‘If that’s what you’re worried about. I’m not going to touch your front at all, and I’m not looking either. One of the reasons you’re in this position is so that your belly is automatically protected. Your thighs are helping to pin your clothing in place, so your clothing can’t pull up all the way properly anyway, it will hide what you don’t want me to see.’

Efnisien said nothing, and Arden pressed his palm to the line of Efnisien’s bare spine.

‘But,’ Arden said, ‘if you’re worried about me touching your skin, then you have your safewords, and I’d be happy to hear them whenever you think you need them. But I’m going to touch you as much as I want until I hear those words. That’s just something you’re going to have to get used to, buttercup.’

When Arden brought up the possibility of safewords, Efnisien almost frowned. And then Arden said, _I’m going to touch you as much as I want…That’s just something you’re going to have to get used to,_ and he could’ve sworn that a part of him shut down in response. He wanted that. He wanted it even if it was too much and he couldn’t handle it. He wanted it even if he cried like a fucking four year old and Arden thought he was stupid because of it.

When he felt Arden’s hands on his back, he couldn’t stop the small sound he made. He was too busy wanting it to monitor himself properly.

‘And you like it anyway,’ Arden said smugly.

It wasn’t even annoying. It was just true.

Arden dug his thumbs in on either side of Efnisien’s spine and dragged his hands upwards, digging into the muscles and tendons, and Efnisien thought _fucking hell,_ and clasped his hands a little tighter, because he needed something to hang onto.

Efnisien didn’t even know so many kinds of touch existed. Like the way Arden spread his fingers out and then scratched his nails lightly over Efnisien’s ribs, from the spine outwards, or from his shoulder blades and then down. Or his knuckles would press in sometimes, causing a mild bruising pain that felt good, maybe like massages were supposed to feel. Or he’d use the tips of his fingers and make complicated patterns that seemed like they’d make sense if Efnisien had the wherewithal to concentrate. Or he’d run the backs of his hands over Efnisien’s lower back, or grasp at his skin with his palms, as though he could grab handfuls, even if there wasn’t enough flesh to manage it.

Efnisien’s breathing turned heavy, his whole body warmed, and he felt like he’d melted. Arden was learning things about him that he didn’t know about either until Arden figured them out. Like he was weak for someone digging their fingers in hard on either side of his lower spine and dragging outwards. He shivered when that happened. Or the skin just behind his armpits was so sensitive that someone drawing little circles there made him gasp, then gasp again. He didn’t know until today that if someone drew a line from the base of his spine to the top, that was less sensitive than someone drawing that line back down again.

But Arden learned all of it, repeating the things that Efnisien liked most, until Efnisien felt like he was floating in a warm pool of water. Sometimes his toes curled, sometimes his fists rocked back and forth where they were clasped together.

He’d stopped paying attention to the occasional, small vocalisations he made. The times he went ‘mmm’ because he couldn’t help it, or the times he groaned softly, or that one time he whimpered when Arden first found the sensitive skin on the outsides of his shoulders. Arden never criticised him for it, and whenever Arden spoke, he said nice things.

He called Efnisien beautiful and good, and a bunch of other words that didn’t matter to Efnisien as much as the first two. Although none of them were insignificant.

Arden leaned over him and pressed his mouth to Efnisien’s back, then opened his mouth and licked over his skin, the scrape of teeth following. And all of Efnisien’s nerves – which felt like they’d woken enough – pulsed with something electric, and his breathing hitched.

_‘Fuck,’_ he breathed.

Arden’s laugh was low and pleased. ‘Do you like it?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Efnisien managed.

‘How much do you like it?’

Efnisien shuddered as teeth bit down over the curve of his ribs, where they began to fold towards his front. Arden drew a wet circle with his tongue, and then sucked the skin there, and Efnisien’s hands clenched.

‘Arden… Arden, please.’

‘How much?’ Arden said, his voice painting itself coolly across the saliva on Efnisien’s back.

‘…A lot,’ Efnisien managed. ‘It’s confusing.’

‘Ah. Well, I’d better do it some more then, baby, and maybe it will get less confusing.’

Efnisien’s muscles twitched helplessly as Arden dug his hands into his back and pressed his mouth down again.

After that, Efnisien was gone, lost in sensory stimulation. He vaguely recalled Arden saying something about petting Isabelle until she got annoyed, but he didn’t know that he’d ever find this annoying. Arden was thorough, even when only exploring a small patch of skin. He didn’t seem happy until he’d touched it with all of his fingers, pressed down with his hand, poked at the skin with his fingertips and then his tongue before soothing it with his mouth. The scrapes of teeth were never painful, but sometimes Arden would scratch him with the edges of his fingernails, and that enlivened all of his nerves, dancing towards some kind of pain, but never quite getting there.

Efnisien forgot about his hands, he forgot about his arms, he forgot about the heavy pressure of his head on the carpet, which he knew had stamped a carpet pattern into his forehead. He forgot about everything except the way Arden moved over him, and the lazy, flushed heat moving through his body. It was like a really good dream, except he’d never had one of those, and he was awake. But he thought maybe this was what a really good dream felt like. He didn’t want it to stop.

That Arden liked doing this at all was kind of amazing, that he wanted to do it specifically to Efnisien was even more amazing. It broke his brain. He didn’t deserve this, and he knew it deep down in some abyssal place that spoke truths he hated but couldn’t turn away from. That feeling crawled uncomfortably through him, his eyes prickled with tears again, but then Arden nosed underneath the top of Efnisien’s jumper and shirt and bit down gently just behind his armpit, and Efnisien whimpered, his voice straight up breaking.

‘That’s it, baby,’ Arden cooed against him. ‘That’s it.’

Efnisien took a deep, shaking breath, and slipped deeper into the sensations of what was happening. It went on for a long time. Enough that he began to feel dozy, and when Arden gently tucked his shirt and jumper back down, he wanted to shake his head, but couldn’t be bothered.

But when Arden gently went to tug Efnisien’s hands apart, he made a faint sound of protest.

‘I know,’ Arden said. ‘But it’s all right, angel, and your hands are going to be sore as it is. Believe it or not, this kind of thing is harder on you than ropes can be sometimes. Come on, unlock your fingers for me, beautiful one, you can do it.’

Efnisien’s knuckles felt raw inside as he started to unlink them. Arden took hold of both of his hands as he started to slide them apart, and squeezed each of his palms firmly, and that helped. Arden briskly massaged the sides and undersides of his fingers, and then carefully bent them at the knuckles. Efnisien decided that felt good too and drifted again.

He had to shift position after that. First, Arden helped him roll onto his side instead of straightening up into a kneeling position again. At some point, Arden had put the yoga mat alongside him, because he rolled onto that instead of the floor. And then Arden was quietly instructing him to straighten one leg at a time, his hands showing Efnisien how he wanted him to move. And that meant Arden was moving around a lot, but Efnisien was losing track of where he was, or what he was doing, until he was asking Efnisien to do something.

And then Arden was encouraging Efnisien to sit and scoot backwards, and Efnisien did, tiredly, until arms looped around his torso from behind and he was encouraged to lie back against Arden, who was leaning against the bottom of the couch. Legs were bent on either side of him, and one of his arms fell outside of Arden’s thigh absently.

Arden encouraged Efnisien’s head back against his shoulder by stroking his hair until Efnisien couldn’t keep his head up anymore.

‘Yeah, okay,’ Arden said quietly, almost like he didn’t need Efnisien to listen to him. ‘We can try rope one day. Feeling a lot better about that now. You really are…kind of made for this world, babydoll. I’m glad I got to be the one who met you. I’m glad you opened up to me a bit more. But oh, you’re so sleepy, aren’t you? Look at you, my soft little flower. You don’t need to come back yet. You feeling okay?’

Efnisien nodded. And Arden’s hand stroked over his hair, the side of his face, and Efnisien didn’t think about anything at all.

Some time later, Arden pressed a piece of food to Efnisien’s mouth, and he opened it automatically. A chocolate truffle was pushed in, and as he bit down, he tasted the sharpness of dark chocolate and orange and made a sound even as his eyes fluttered open. He took a huge breath, sighing it out, and then realised – as he continued to chew – that he really was leaning back against Arden. _Sprawled_ against him, more like it. One of his legs bent, the other sticking out.

‘Good?’ Arden said.

‘Mmhm,’ Efnisien said in response. ‘I’ve missed chocolate.’

‘Why have you missed it?’

‘Well… It’s expensive,’ Efnisien said finally. ‘I mean it’s not _that_ expensive. But for a while it was really expensive. And I don’t like- I don’t like the cheap kinds.’

‘That’s because you’re a princess who demands fancy things sometimes.’

_Jesus._

‘Want another one?’ Arden asked, and Efnisien nodded.

Arden fed him the second, and Efnisien chewed over it thoughtfully while looking around the lounge. Isabelle was fast asleep in the kitchen, one of her back legs twitching like she was running. The pink cushion and black yoga mat were only a few feet away. Efnisien felt like his entire world had been carved apart on the backs of Arden’s wandering hands.

‘Also, no more rules,’ Arden said quietly. ‘The scene’s over. You did…’ Hands came up and grasped his shoulders. ‘You did _so good.’_

‘How- How do you bring me out of it like that? It’s like one moment I was kind of… I dunno. And now I’m talking.’

‘Didn’t feel like you could talk before, huh?’

‘ _Couldn’t,’_ Efnisien said, laughing softly. ‘Couldn’t talk, before. I dunno what you find interesting about me not being able to function, like, _at all._ But you are sure good at making it so that my operating systems are down.’

‘Ohh, _thank_ you.’

‘No- It wasn’t… I didn’t mean-’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know. As for bringing you back, it was the food this time. I mean getting you upright and sitting and relaxing a bit too. I think you would’ve resisted if I tried to bring you out of subspace too soon, and I’m going to be honest with you, you’re still a little bit _in_ it. Just, compared to how you were before, it might be hard for you to tell. But sharp flavours wake up the senses, and sometimes that’s all you need. I knew someone once who kept like, lemon wedges in his fridge specifically for scenes. It’s not a very nice way to come out of one though, chocolate’s much nicer.’

‘It is,’ Efnisien said, chasing the flavour of the truffle in his mouth with his tongue. He hadn’t eaten at all that day, and his stomach grumbled. He didn’t know if it was a grumble of hunger, a grumble of dissatisfaction that he’d eaten something with chocolate and orange in it, or something else. Maybe all of the above.

‘Anyway, keep relaxing,’ Arden said.

‘I’m not too heavy?’

‘Pfft.’ And then Arden laughed. ‘No. You’re not heavy at all. So was I right? Was it challenging but ultimately relaxing?’

‘I hate that you knew it was going to be like this.’

‘Not _exactly_ like this,’ Arden said.

‘Yeah, sorry for like, crying like an idiot toddler.’

‘Hey,’ Arden said, his laidback voice changing, pulling up into something more serious. ‘No. It’s not like that at all. I don’t like it when you talk about yourself that way, but also, it’s normal to have strong emotional responses to what we’re doing. Efnisien, crying is nothing to be ashamed of, and it’s also nothing I’m afraid of. You know there are people who cry just from getting massages? Sometimes being touched – especially if it hasn’t happened in a while, or you’re feeling vulnerable – sometimes it just does that.’

Efnisien frowned, and then he turned to look at Arden to make sure he didn’t have some kind of ‘I’m just joking, you _were_ an idiot’ look on his face. But he didn’t. Arden looked completely serious.

‘It’s probably going to happen again in the future,’ Arden said, staring at him levelly. ‘I’m fine with that, I even like it, but are _you_ okay with it?’

Efnisien turned back so that he was facing ahead and picked at his jumper absently, and then shrugged.

‘You were really nice to me,’ Efnisien said in a low voice. ‘Like, so nice. If I ever got like that around my aunt, she’d hit me.’

Arden tensed, and Efnisien blinked as he realised what he’d said. Why the fuck was he talking about that now? Or _at all?_

‘Oh,’ Arden said, like the breath had been shoved out of him. His arms wrapped tighter around Efnisien. ‘Oh, sweetheart.’

‘I’m making it sound worse than it is.’

‘What would Dr Gary say?’ Arden said.

‘You know, that’s a really _sneaky_ thing to ask.’

‘So what would he say?’

Efnisien sighed and then chewed at the inside of his lip. ‘Arden? May I…? May I put my hand on one of your hands? I won’t do anything else. I promise.’

‘Of course you can,’ Arden said.

So Efnisien placed his hand over Arden’s where it rested on his side, and then he tried wiggling his hand beneath Arden’s, because that felt more right. And Arden lifted his hand, captured Efnisien’s, and held it close.

There, that was better.

‘Dr Gary would say she was abusive,’ Efnisien said, clearing his throat. ‘But you know, so was I, so-’

‘No, they don’t cancel each other out,’ Arden said against the back of Efnisien’s head.

After a few minutes of silence that felt awkward to Efnisien, he turned in closer to Arden. And Arden’s other hand came up stroked at his face, and Efnisien, feeling silly and needy and still a bit dazed, pressed his face into Arden’s hand and then rubbed it all over his palm. And Arden laughed quietly, and didn’t seem as serious as before.

‘You’re so cute,’ Arden said, poking the tip of Efnisien’s nose.

‘I’m still so fucking out of it,’ Efnisien complained, his voice muffled against Arden’s palm.

‘So _relax!’_ Arden exclaimed, and then burst into that stupid, giggly laughter, half-guffaw, half-ridiculousness. ‘Stop trying to snap yourself out of it, for god’s sake! You’ll come out of it naturally. Give your body a chance to just _rest._ You can sleep, you can doze, or we can talk, but you are fine and you’ll be fine. And if you’re not fine, I’m literally right here. I’ll catch you.’

_I’ll catch you._

Efnisien’s entire chest clenched up, his whole brain did a thing where his thoughts stumbled over themselves all at once. He fell quiet, and then he turned and was pretty sure he just _snuggled_ closer to Arden. Like maybe the word was invented for what he _just_ did. Jesus.

‘There you go,’ Arden said. ‘It’s a new skill, isn’t it? But it’s one I know you can learn. Okay? You’re doing such a great job.’

He didn’t feel like he was the one doing a great job, he was pretty sure that was Arden. He felt…so good seeing him. And he closed his eyes and wanted to relax, he did, but that deep truth from before – the knowledge that he didn’t deserve this – was skulking around inside of him like a starving rangy animal. He could feel the promise of its jaws, the threat of its teeth, and at some point it was going to try and gulp him down whole.

But even if he couldn’t properly relax, he could be greedy, he could let Arden hold him and talk to him and pet him, and pretend it was okay, pretend he was allowed this.

He was, after all, great at lying to himself.


	44. Liar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for suicidal ideation

Monday, Efnisien woke from fitful sleep feeling as numb and lost inside as he had during the worst months of staying at Hillview. He opened his eyes to the certainty that he didn’t deserve to be alive, let alone have anything good, and he thought about all the things he was allowing himself – Arden, better food, Dr Gary, a job he liked, books he enjoyed – and he thought that just because there wasn’t a law against it, didn’t mean it wasn’t still criminal for him to enjoy those things after everything he’d done.

Once, he’d asked Dr Gary if he should go straight to jail.

‘Should I just go to the cops and confess?’ he’d said.

That was back in Hillview, when he was in the uncomfortable blue chair that tons of other kids had also used, some of them being the ones that had beaten him unconscious in the showers as a warm welcome aboard.

He’d been feeling uncommonly cooperative that day, but he remembered still thinking every minute or so about the different ways he could kill Dr Gary, and how fucking stupid Dr Gary was for sitting there without a weapon in his hands, or a Perspex window between them, or _something._ What an idiot.

‘Cuz like, all this froufrou bullshit seems like, I dunno, fucking _bullshit,’_ Efnisien had said scathingly. ‘Maybe I should be in prison for a really fucking long time.’

‘Two things,’ Dr Gary said calmly. ‘All of your crimes were committed when you were a juvenile, and due to mitigating factors in your childhood, there’s a high likelihood you’d be tried as a child and not an adult. At most, you would have spent time in a juvenile facility, with an expunged record and freedom soon after. Which doesn’t sound like what you’re aiming for. The second, what do you think prison will teach you?’

‘It won’t _teach_ me dick. It will put me away. Where I belong. They should bring back capital punishment! That’s what they should do. Wouldn’t that be like… I mean what a fucking awesome way to go. Fuck.’

Dr Gary’s expression didn’t change at all.

Now, as Efnisien lay in bed staring emptily up at the ceiling, he realised Dr Gary probably showed a lot less of his reactions back then to hold off the times Efnisien got mad at him for simply raising his eyebrows.

But Efnisien thought overall, he deserved to be killed. But in lieu of that, he deserved to be put in jail, so he’d have no choice but to feel miserable forever. It wouldn’t be enough, but it would be _something._

Dr Gary had brought up the concept of penance, even back then, and Efnisien had lost his shit, because that had sounded like Efnisien was trying to do something not awful. And he was _awful._

That was definitely how he felt this morning.

He lay there for hours until he checked his email to see if he had anything from Professor Adayemi. As his phone lit up, there was a message from Arden on the screen.

_Hey, hey, sweetheart! How’re you doing after yesterday? Nadiya’s win was so awesome, right? Let me know how you’re feeling._

Efnisien stared at the message for a long time.

They’d watched several hours of _Great British Bake Off_ afterwards – until the season finished – and Efnisien had blanked out, then focused as hard as he could on the characters, because something was wrong in his body and in his mind. He couldn’t think of anything worse than rewarding all of Arden’s care and attention and generosity with _that._

Normally he was bad at hiding stuff, but it’d reminded him of the times when he felt miserable at home. If he was going to be Crielle’s, and if he was going to be looked after by her, he had to be happy. He had to smile and be cheerful because Crielle was around and he was always, _always_ grateful for her. No matter what.

He was grateful for Arden, too.

Efnisien opened up his messenger and started to write, _I’m fine,_ when he realised Arden might sense that Efnisien was not actually fine at all after a sentence like that.

What would a genuinely happy Efnisien say?

It was too hard to think about. Efnisien rested his phone on his chest for several minutes, his hand on top of it, and then he wrote:

_I’m feeling a bit tired today, but otherwise good. Normal-ish I think. How are you?_

There, Arden would expect him to feel worn out after the scene, and Efnisien could highlight that.

Absently, he thought he had nothing really useful to overdose on, but he could probably get something. He didn’t really want to overdose anyway. He always thought he’d stab himself in the shower if he was going to kill himself. He’d retrace all the wounds that Crielle had left in him with a blade, and this time an ambulance wouldn’t come, no one would know.

The visions were vivid and omnipresent. He knew they were as much intrusive thought as they were wanting to die. Because he didn’t _really_ want to die, he just knew that he _deserved_ to die, and it was satisfying to imagine all his useless, stupid blood going into the drain system where it belonged.

His phone pinged.

_That’s great, let me know if anything changes, baby. I’m doing good! By the way, this week is shaping up to be stupid busy, can we catch up on Tuesday? Is it okay if I take you over to Kadek’s? It’s cool if you can’t. I’ll try and work something out. Kadek’s super laidback._

Efnisien thought that if he was alive on Tuesday, he _still_ wouldn’t want to meet someone new. Not after Bridge. He was getting tired of meeting new people. He was pretty sure Arden was some kind of miraculous fluke who should be spending all that goodness on people who actually deserved it. Imagine, there were actually people out there who hadn’t killed animals or molested girls and they could’ve benefitted from those scenes too.

They deserved it.

He didn’t.

Efnisien pressed his phone to his forehead. Breathing hurt. Sometimes it was like this, his inhales and exhales feeling so laboursome that he wondered what would happen if he just stopped breathing.

But he’d tried it, and he knew he’d keep breathing even when his lungs were tired.

Efnisien’s phone dinged again.

_Also, I’ve kind of wanted you to meet Kadek for a while,_ Arden wrote. _I have some cool friends! I think you’d like some of them. Plus Kadek wants to meet you. He wants to meet my boyfriend, since I’ve basically never had one before. Or not in a super long time anyway._

Efnisien stared at the message and looked up at the ceiling again.

_We can try it,_ he wrote in response, feeling like he was coring himself out. He rolled onto his front and placed his phone facedown on his bedside table. His hand dropped limply off the side of his bed and he breathed heavily and wished he could capture how he’d felt in that scene on Sunday. It had been…so good.

So good.

Imagine if someone was kind like that to Robert Berdella, after everything he’d done. Imagine if someone gave Berdella that perfection, after Berdella had injected caulk into someone’s ears and tied them up and strangled them and raped them and then killed them and cut them into pieces.

Efnisien made a short, broken sound and became lost in a labyrinth of intrusive thoughts that weren’t about him, yet somehow were completely about him. He couldn’t escape, and after a while, he stopped trying. He was a body, and his brain was a lump that made nightmarish visions that made him want to die.

*

He was shaking as he made himself something to eat. And then he stood there with half a teaspoonful of sugar in his spoon, staring down at his porridge, and he realised that he’d like it more with the sugar and so he tipped it back into the container.

He didn’t deserve it.

He ate the unflavoured porridge mechanically, staring at nothing. Afterwards he washed and dried his bowl and added tallies to the whiteboard and felt hollow.

His bank balance was higher than it should be when he checked it, and the email from Professor Adayemi had a Dropbox link to audio files, and a note saying that he’d been given a raise. He mentally added up the difference between what he should’ve had and what he actually had in his bank account and wondered if there was a way to tell her to stop paying him more. She had a very stern tone in all of her correspondence, and he didn’t think she’d appreciate him telling her not to pay him more.

He remembered Dr Gary’s lecture, the time Efnisien tried to convince him to keep charging him full price for the sessions. He didn’t want another lecture like that.

The satchel and the water bottle arrived that day. Some clothing, too. He unwrapped it all and laid it out on his table and felt, strangely, like crying. Why was he trying to make his life better? Was he trying to forget? Was he trying to escape what he’d done? How he’d hurt those girls? Those animals? Saving one snail didn’t make up for anything.

But he hadn’t been aware of trying to make up for anything when he’d saved it. He just…felt bad for the snail.

Did that make him worse? Was he worse for not trying to make up for it? Was his every action supposed to be something done with the awareness of balancing the scales? That’s what it _should_ be. Why couldn’t he do that?

_Because you’re bad._

He closed his eyes and picked up the grey-green sweater and pressed it to his chest like a plush toy, then carefully laid it on the table again.

Robert Berdella used to write notes about his victims. Efnisien had memorised nearly all of the ones Crielle had shown him. Aside from the stuff that seemed almost obvious, like noting when and how and for how long he was raping his victims, or what he was doing to them, or if they were fighting him, were logs of how many milligrams of drugs he was injecting into them to break their minds and make them docile.

He wondered if Crielle had logs like that. Was she inspired by Berdella? She meticulously logged everything she ever did to Gwyn, not just on video, but also in documents. Did she log every drug she’d ever fed Efnisien? Did it all go lovingly into some private journal? Or was it absent notes she dashed off for her own satisfaction?

He thought he’d throw up for a moment, but he’d never been that kind of guy. Sure, when Arden told him about Laurie and his childhood, that was different. But his own past?

Eventually Efnisien forced himself to get some work done, and he ordered more clothes, this time underwear – briefs, because he’d never liked boxers and besides, Crielle didn’t like them either – and shirts and socks. He hated himself for all of it. He felt lonely. He didn’t understand why he felt lonely, after what was arguably one of the best weekends of his entire life.

He went to bed early, and he slept like he was in a beginner’s class on the subject, and not doing a very good job.

*

‘Hey, baby, Kadek’s just been in touch. He’s asked me for a favour. He’s like- He’s doing something that might freak you out today. So I’m giving you a heads up in case you need to bail.’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said slowly, warily, phone pressed to his ear.

Tuesday morning, he felt marginally more functional. He was seeing Arden – though maybe not, now – and though he didn’t get that butterfly feeling, he had some kind of feeling that wasn’t as awful as the day before.

‘Just- So, ah, fuck. Well we have a side business – it’s mainly Kadek’s – where we sell bondage gear. Rope, actually. Because natural fibres are a bitch to process and he’s been doing it for like most of his life. So we prepare stuff for clients so they don’t have to do it because most of them don’t do a very good job. _Anyway,_ he’s preparing ropes today. He’s asked if I can treat some of them. But I know how you are around ropes, so- I wish he’d told me sooner.’

Efnisien was silent because he didn’t know what to say or do.

‘Also,’ Arden said in a rush. ‘If you can’t do it, that’s _okay._ Wanting to try ropes sometimes with just the two of us in a safe environment, isn’t the same as seeing them at a friend’s house! Especially because you’ve never met him before! I’m freaking out a bit, he’s been talking about needing to do this for ages but he’s been putting off the latest batch for like two months, I didn’t think he’d be stuck in the middle of it _today.’_

‘But no one’s getting tied up,’ Efnisien said, confused. ‘Today.’

‘No! _No._ It’s gonna be like, knowing him probably some music in the background, some very boring, repetitive jobs, and some really great food. And he’s not the kind of guy to like- He knows you have trauma, like he doesn’t know _what,_ but he knows you have stuff going on. He’s not going to make you feel uncomfortable. But if the ropes make you uncomfortable, like, even just the idea, you don’t-’

‘-I don’t have to go,’ Efnisien finished for him.

Arden laughed weakly. ‘That’s the ticket.’

Efnisien stared around his apartment. What was he going to do otherwise? Stand there and vividly imagine what Berdella did to his victims to the point that those intrusive thoughts were starting to feel really personal? Or remember shit that Lludd did to him in the past? Or better yet, think about Hillview and Henton?

‘I’m a bit out of it today,’ Efnisien said finally. ‘But I can come. Um. If it’s okay. If you want me there.’

‘I want you there,’ Arden said fiercely. ‘Kadek’s got like this little garden escape area, we can go hang out there if you need to. He’s got tons of places to escape to if you need some time out.’

‘I can come, Arden,’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t- I get that you’re worried but like- That thing that happened in the bookshop was a one-off so far, right? And you’ve been really good to me so, um, yeah. I’ll see you soon?’

‘Yes, very. I’m heading off like right now.’ Efnisien heard the sound of keys being swiped off a counter through the phone. ‘Bye, gorgeous!’

Efnisien sat at his table and wondered what he was doing with his life. He was stuck. He couldn’t accept living a life where he got good things he didn’t deserve, but he also couldn’t accept one where he only suffered. Was it because he’d been spoiled by Crielle so much? It was probably that.

He let his forehead hit the table in tired despair, then sucked in a breath and told himself to pull it the fuck together. If not for himself, then at least for Arden, who was the best, and didn’t deserve any of Efnisien’s stupid, existential bullshit.

*

Arden didn’t talk in the car as usual. Efnisien was so used to heading towards Arden’s house – even the forest where Arden sometimes walked Isabelle was that way – that he was surprised when they headed north instead. Efnisien clutched the outside of his thigh because this was the direction where they all used to live – Lludd and Crielle, him and Gwyn – it was the direction of Murdoch and his entire past.

But they didn’t go to Crielle’s house, or Murdoch. They eventually ended up turning down a street of exclusively two and three storey homes, giant ghost gums lining the street with their willowy canopies.

‘He’s rich,’ Efnisien said, looking out of the window as Arden pulled into a driveway shaded with large, healthy jacarandas. The grass was immaculate. The amount of clean, shiny glass at the front of the house was insane.

‘He’s doing okay,’ Arden said casually, as he turned off the engine.

‘Dude,’ Efnisien said. ‘He’s- Like, my aunt lived not _that_ far away from here.’

‘Oh yeah, there’s some streets ten minutes away that are… Crazy money. Now, since today is new ground for you, if you feel like you need a break or we need to talk about leaving, I want you to text me one of the safewords, okay? Yellow for a break, and blue to go home. Can you do that?’

‘I can hang out with your friend, Arden. I don’t know why you’d want me to, but I can do it.’

Arden reached out and curved his hand around Efnisien’s cheek. The touch was casual, but it didn’t feel casual. Arden had a strange look on his face.

‘You said you were doing okay yesterday,’ Arden said. ‘Are you doing worse today?’

‘What?’ Efnisien said, staring at him. _How can you tell?_ He hated that he felt caught in a lie. ‘I just- You know, after all the horrible things I’ve done…’

‘Well, he doesn’t know about that,’ Arden said quietly. ‘And you don’t do those things anymore. Give it a try, okay? I trust you.’

_I trust you._

God, the words made him want to scoop out all the tarry _shit_ inside of him and actually be a good person. It wasn’t possible, but he’d do anything to be worthy of that.

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said. ‘Okay, Arden.’

‘You didn’t answer my question, baby,’ Arden said softly. ‘You having a worse day today?’

_Having a better one, actually._

‘Um, maybe. I didn’t realise,’ he said. There, that was almost like the truth, wasn’t it? ‘This is new for me. I wasn’t allowed friends as a kid.’

Arden’s face did something, and his hand slid behind Efnisien’s neck. Arden tugged him forward, and then leaned in and placed a gentle kiss on his forehead.

‘Text me a safeword if you need to,’ Arden said against his skin. ‘Let’s give it a try, okay? Kadek’s not expecting you to be anything except yourself.’

It was a Tuesday and Efnisien had no idea who he was. But he nodded and got out of the car. He walked up the steps lined with healthy, tropical-looking plants in huge black shiny ceramic pots. The double doors were large and black, the frame was black, and there was a tiny sticker of a pride rainbow in the shape of a figure eight – like the infinity symbol – on a transparent backing, clinging to the top right corner of the frosted glass that bordered either door.

Arden texted instead of pressing the doorbell. Only thirty seconds later, it opened.

Kadek was about the same height as Arden, and definitely older even now that Efnisien knew that Arden was nearly thirty. He had darkish-brown skin, lively black eyes, and his hair was black and wavy and shaggy, but it was still professionally cut. He wore black jeans and a white shirt and he was lean and muscular in a way that suggested he did some kind of training like Arden. His smile was broad, and he grabbed Arden by the arm in such a familiar way that Efnisien almost said: ‘You can’t do that, you have to ask permission.’

But that rule applied to him, and it obviously didn’t apply to Kadek.

Kadek and Arden hugged fiercely, talking quickly, and everything was happening so fast that Efnisien’s brain fogged out all of the words until Kadek turned towards him and his mind woke up again.

‘So, this must be Efnisien,’ Kadek said. ‘Do you hug?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said automatically, panicking. He looked at Arden to see if he was already fucking up, but the idea of hugging anyone else that wasn’t Arden...

‘That’s fine!’ Kadek said. ‘Here, pleased to meet you.’

Efnisien looked down, then shook Kadek’s hand. His fingers were calloused, his grip was way stronger than Efnisien’s. He’d never seen the point of gripping too tightly during a handshake. People’s fingers and hands were fragile. Crielle never shook anyone’s hand if she could help it.

‘Come in! Come in! Make yourselves at home. Take your shoes off though, there’s little cubbies for them right there. And slippers if you want them, just find a pair that fit. I have a ton. Arden knows the drill.’

Arden was already kicking his shoes off by stepping on the heel with the toe of the other foot and sliding out of sneakers. Efnisien pressed his lips together, he was pretty sure his socks had holes in them. But he took his shoes off as he walked into the house, then stuffed his socks inside. Arden handed him a pair of slippers, and Efnisien slid his feet into them and looked down the long corridor.

A lot of art hung on the walls. Photos of landscapes and art maybe from whatever part of Asia that was part of Kadek’s heritage. There were heavy spicy and fragrant scents in the air – the smells of cooking – but Efnisien didn’t know what they were. He felt ashamed, abruptly, and sheltered. Crielle had never had a diverse palette, and she never involved him in cooking. The scents were delicious, and he didn’t understand any of them.

He hated not understanding things. He had no one else to blame but himself.

‘Come on,’ Arden said, placing a gentle hand at Efnisien’s lower back.

Kadek chattered the entire time about how he’d been awake processing jute from five in the morning.

The house was huge. There was a large sunken lounge they passed which was filled with gorgeous black leather furniture, and expensive looking rugs, and a huge fireplace. There was a grand piano in a corner and rumpled sheet music still on it, which meant it was being used instead of there for show. He wanted to run his fingers along the keys, and his hands curled, it had been so long since he’d played. There were potted plants everywhere, and light streaming in from all angles.

At the back of the house was a huge open-plan kitchen that led into another sunken lounge that was clearly more for relaxing and watching TV. Efnisien immediately noticed the huge coils of beige-brown rope stacked all over the place on top of large black drop-cloths. There was a portable gas burner nearby – though it wasn’t burning – and several cakes of what looked like soap, and containers of what looked like oil. Over the scents of cooking, Efnisien could also smell harsher chemicals that reminded him a little of Crielle’s special rooms.

In the kitchen, on one of the counters, Efnisien saw a whole bunch of lemons and limes, lots of green, leafy herbs he didn’t recognise, and basil, which he did. There was something bubbling in a pot on what looked like a professional stove with a rangehood humming over it, and a large chopping board was out with knives next to it.

‘I feel terrible asking for your help,’ Kadek said. ‘Except I don’t really. But I’m never going to get through all of this on my own. It’s my fault, but I’ve had to soak, wash and stretch these guys…’ He gestured vaguely to the rope. ‘…Four or five times. It’s taken forever. I’ve let the website go too long before restocking.’

‘Am I on singe duty?’ Arden asked.

‘I thought Efnisien could do it because it’s fun,’ Kadek said, and Arden made a face like that wasn’t okay. Efnisien tensed.

Kadek pulled out some plates and bowls and frowned as he set them at the large wooden table nearby.

‘It’s not fun?’ Kadek said.

‘I don’t know if Ef should be around an open flame,’ Arden said.

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said abruptly. ‘No, I really shouldn’t.’

‘Right,’ Kadek said, nodding to himself. ‘What about the oiling and the waxing? I mean-’ He turned to Efnisien. ‘-You don’t have to do anything, actually. There’s consoles and stuff if you want to play games, or watch TV or something.’

Efnisien saw books open on the kitchen table all written in Japanese, and a notebook open with kanji written inside of it. Arden followed his gaze and walked over.

‘Trying not to get rusty?’ he said.

‘Got it in one,’ Kadek said, and then he smiled at Efnisien. ‘I’m _technically_ fluent, but I haven’t been back in a while. I don’t want to get rusty.’

‘You’ve been to Japan?’ Efnisien said.

‘Twice! The first time I lived there for a while, teaching ESL – English as a Second Language – to students. And the second time I was there being mentored in aibunawa and semenawa. Uh, rope stuff basically. I lived with a master, and lived and breathed the stuff for a while. But it’s been a few years since I’ve been back. My parents want me to go to Lombok to visit them some time, but I dunno, man. I like it there, but I’m a Japanophile, and if I go back to Indo, I want to go to Japan too. They’re not that close to each other, but I feel like I can’t go to one without going to the other!’

Kadek started laughing, then opened a giant fridge and leaned into it.

‘Drinks?’ he said. ‘What’s everyone having?’

‘Juice,’ Arden said. ‘Whatever you’ve got. Efnisien will probably have water.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said.

‘Dude, you’re already picking his drinks?’ Kadek said, looking over the fridge door at Arden with interest.

‘He doesn’t really pick anything otherwise,’ Arden said, laughing. ‘And it’s what he always has at mine.’ Arden turned to Efnisien. ‘Do you want anything different?’

‘Um.’ Efnisien shrugged. ‘Water’s fine.’

‘Damn,’ Kadek said, pulling drinks out of the fridge. ‘You found yourself a good boy. He’s so polite.’

_Not that fucking polite._

‘Ahhh,’ Arden said, laughing more. ‘Not _that_ polite. He’s on his best behaviour.’

Efnisien realised that they were used to talking about BDSM and kink like it was just…normal. As normal as talking about drinks, or going back to Lombok. It wasn’t sinister or weird, and he some of the tension disappeared from his shoulders. Kadek reminded him a little of Arden, and he wondered if that was why they were such good friends.

‘How did you both meet?’ Efnisien asked.

‘The scene,’ Kadek said easily, pouring drinks for all of them. He poured water for himself too, which made Efnisien feel a little better, like he wasn’t the most boring person on the planet.

‘Kadek was my mentor for a while,’ Arden said. ‘Actually the longest mentor I’ve ever had. He’s like a celebrity in the scene, I was very lucky that he chose me. There were a lot of people wanting to apprentice to him.’

‘There’s like- You apprentice to people?’ Efnisien said, kind of amazed.

‘Mmhm,’ Arden said. ‘I mean not everyone, and honestly there’s not enough mentors to go around, which is also why we both run hands-on classes for groups. It’s also a good way to see who’s getting really serious, who might need a mentor.’

‘Do you mentor anyone?’ Efnisien said. And then, ‘Thank you,’ when Kadek put a glass of water in front of him and they walked into the lounge instead of to the kitchen table.

Kadek just smiled, it was as bright and bold as Arden’s.

‘I used to,’ Arden said. ‘But it’s a lot of responsibility, and I haven’t done it for a little while. I’d been thinking about it again, but then I met you and… Well, given the choice, I’d rather spend time with you.’

‘ _Nawwww,’_ Kadek said to Arden. ‘You’re _never_ like this, holy shit.’

‘Shut _up,’_ Arden said, punching Kadek in the arm. It looked like a light punch, but it was still a punch, and Efnisien stared down at his glass and told himself not to tense, it was fine.

Not only was he taking time away from other people – good people – who could be having scenes with Arden, he was taking time away from apprentices, too.

He didn’t know where to sit, and then Arden casually patted the cushion next to him on the couch, and Efnisien went automatically. Kadek sat cross-legged on the floor and pulled one of the lengths of rope to him, uncoiling it and inspecting it critically.

‘Anyway,’ Kadek said, without even looking up, ‘I mentored Arden for like five years pretty intensively when I realised he was going to be a serious rigger, and then another five years on and off.’

‘How old are you?’ Efnisien said without thinking. And then he felt his cheeks colour. ‘Sorry. I’m being rude.’

‘Oh yeah, I am _not_ precious about my age, hey,’ Kadek said. ‘I’m forty this November. I’m _so_ not ready to turn forty. My family keep going on about when I’m going to like, have a family of my own, and it’s not like they expect babies and marriage and shit, but I think they expect me to at least adopt a _dog._ Just something. And it’s like… Get off my nuts, guys, I’m doing fine the way I am.’ He looked up at Arden. ‘You’re so lucky you cut your whole family off because of intense and horrible trauma, I still have to stay in touch with mine.’

‘I mean, I could arrange intense and horrible trauma if you want,’ Arden said sweetly, and Efnisien realised they were joking with each other.

‘Sadly, it has to come from them,’ Kadek said mournfully. ‘And they’re so fucking _nice._ They send me these care packages with all of my favourite childhood foods and frankly some I can’t stand, but Mum does it every two months. Save it for Christmas, Mum, but no, she never listens. Care packages all the goddamn time.’

‘She’s such a monster,’ Arden said.

‘I _know,’_ Kadek said.

‘And all she wants is for you to adopt a dog or a cat,’ Arden said.

‘I _know,’_ Kadek said, then started laughing. ‘Leave me to my ropes, woman! I told her that DMing for my current group is a bit like having kids and she told me to stop being such a dumb weeb and I told her Dungeons and Dragons wasn’t weeb shit and she told me that everything I did I turned to weeb shit, and that if I loved Japan so much, I should just go _live_ there. Closest we ever got to a fight, and she was laughing the whole time. You know she sends me vouchers to some of my favourite Japan vendors, she fully enables my weeb shit.’

Kadek was looking imploringly and theatrically at Efnisien now, like he was trying to elicit sympathy. Efnisien didn’t know what some of the words meant, and eventually he just nodded like he had any idea what Kadek was talking about.

‘Tell her you have a dog,’ Arden said. ‘Take some shots of Isabelle.’

‘She _knows_ Isabelle. She follows Izzy’s dumb fucking Instagram account. She _loves_ Isabelle. Also she knows you, asshole. She’s totally going to be in on that scam.’

‘I mean I could get you a dog,’ Arden said, grinning.

_‘Don’t_ you fucking dare,’ Kadek said. ‘If I get a dog, I’m getting like a German Shepherd, or like, I don’t know, something huge. And then she’ll be sad I didn’t get a Chihuahua or something small and cute. She just has to fight with me, that’s how she gets her life force. The day I stop fighting with her, she’s going to shrivel up and perish.’

‘You love it,’ Arden said, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other. In the same motion, he slid an arm around Efnisien’s shoulders and gently squeezed. Efnisien looked at him in shock, but Arden was watching Kadek.

‘I do though, I miss her,’ Kadek said, rubbing his hands against the rope and watching little bits of fuzz and fibres flake off. ‘It really does need singing though. Look at this. Jute is a bitch to prepare. No wonder everyone buys it from us.’

‘Why is it bad to prepare?’ Efnisien asked.

‘If you buy it in bulk, like I do, first you have to cut it into the right lengths. Then you have to pre-soak it in hot water, because that stuff comes absolutely saturated in chemicals. People who think they’re allergic to natural fibres are almost ninety percent of the time allergic to the JBO – Jute Batching Oil – which isn’t even used to condition the jute, but like, to make sure the machines don’t fall apart processing the rope. So all that stuff has to be soaked out as much as possible. Most people do the soak-wash process once, but we do it around three to five times. But each time you pre-soak and then wash, you also have to boil it, and then dry it under tension, because it needs to be weighed down.

‘If you’re like, someone who’s only processing your own rope, you’re probably cutting corners and you don’t have as much to work through anyway. I’m working with like hundreds of metres here. Just weighing it all down is a pain in the ass. Anyway, I’ve done all of that a few times. That batch is ready to be oiled. This batch here is ready to be singed. And singed rope needs to be washed again to burn off the soot. Anyway, singing is to get rid of all this fuzzy shit. Because that’s unsightly and gross in a scene, and it can stick in a model’s skin and feel painful, and it’s unprofessional. Jute can flake, but it shouldn’t be flaking like this.’

Efnisien was fascinated in spite of himself. It was harder to feel as threatened by it all when Kadek was nerding out about it, and was talking about how he washed so rope so many times so that people had less chance of an allergic reaction. Arden’s arm around his back felt solid and warm, and Efnisien wanted to lean into him, but stopped himself. Even now, he kept wanting things he shouldn’t have.

The buzz of a phone ringing, and Efnisien looked around, startled, only for Arden’s arm to slip away from behind him. Arden got his phone out of his jeans and made a sound of frustration when he saw the caller.

‘Shit, I have to take this. Sorry. I won’t be too long. Dojo stuff.’

He walked away, then disappeared down another corridor. The last thing Efnisien heard was:

‘Nathan, what’s up?’

And then Efnisien was alone with Kadek. He went from feeling comfortable, to feeling vastly more tense, and he pushed back into the couch and pretended he found the consoles really interesting.

‘You’re new to all of it, aren’t you?’ Kadek said, and Efnisien looked at him, shocked that Kadek was talking to him. ‘All of this.’

He gestured to all of the coils of rope.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said.

Kadek nodded. ‘And Arden said you’re kind of… Like he hasn’t betrayed any details, but like you’re kind of phobic with some of it?’

‘I guess,’ Efnisien said. ‘Um, yeah.’

‘That sucks. You’re in good hands, but phobias are a bitch to deal with.’

Efnisien nodded and looked around the lounge and the kitchen. After a while he wrapped a hand around his stomach and felt like he’d made a mistake. There was nothing wrong with Kadek, but… This was the kind of thing other people did. He felt like Crielle was there somehow, watching him, and wondering why he was even trying to do these kinds of things, when he wasn’t made for it.

Arden was taking kind of a while. He looked over his shoulder towards the hallway he’d disappeared down, and when he turned back, Kadek was watching him.

‘How’s your week been so far? Did you have a good day yesterday?’ Kadek said, even as he turned his face down to inspect the coils of rope. He must have noticed specifics that Efnisien couldn’t because he discarded one long length in a coil to his right, but the others were stacked to his left.

‘Um,’ Efnisien rubbed at the back of his neck. ‘Yesterday was kind of- I dunno. It was fine, I guess. Yeah, it was fine.’

If he was hunting, if he was planning on attacking Kadek, he’d be charming as fuck. But Kadek wasn’t really the kind of person he’d hunt in the first place. Besides, Kadek had been friendly so far, and Efnisien was tired of seeing friendliness as a sign of naivete. The world was… way harder to live in when he had to think that way.

‘Is this your home?’ Efnisien said. ‘Sorry, I know that’s rude.’

‘I don’t mind rude questions,’ Kadek said, smirking down at the rope. ‘My life is kind of made of rude questions. Uh, yeah, it’s my house. But my parents had a head start on the mortgage. They bought it when they moved here from Bali, and then they went back because of family stuff, and I was in a position to pay the mortgage and keep it up for them in case they came back here? And then they decided they weren’t coming back, and I took over the mortgage entirely, and now the house is in my name.’

‘But bookshops don’t make that much money, do they?’ Efnisien said.

He wondered why he never asked Crielle these kinds of questions. What were they doing that they could afford their villa?

Well. Crime. He knew that much. And Crielle’s family. Crielle’s family were even more loaded than Lludd’s.

‘They do not,’ Kadek said, nodding and picking fussily at a length of rope before discarding that length to his right as well. His black pants were covered in fine beige-brown fibres. ‘Most of my money comes from online rope courses, the Patreon that’s connected to that, and the rope store. Some savvy investments, too. I have a kickass financial advisor, and she’s been great. I’m not very good at working for other people, though teaching in Japan was the exception, loved that. But anyway, as a teen I started my own hustles and went from there. Most of them failed. Or they didn’t fail, but they just didn’t do well enough to justify keeping them. Some of them failed. I started a sandboarding company when I was nineteen, sold the company, and that gave me a good boost to go into the start-ups I was most interested in.’

‘So the bookshop is like… Because you like books?’

‘Yes!’ Kadek said. ‘And because we have the largest BDSM bookshop in the world. It’s even larger online. Once you can advertise on the basis that you’re the largest something _anywhere,_ that just draws traffic, y’know?’

‘And Arden helps you?’

‘That dude has more energy than three guys put together,’ Kadek said, almost under his breath, and then nodded. ‘It’s funny, I mentored him intensively for five years. Partly because he wanted to do advanced full suspensions on different kinds of hardpoints and he thought about getting into gallery rigging for a while – like rope installations in art galleries are a thing, especially in Europe – and after that we were just mates, and he always saw the holes in what I was doing. I have a bunch of brothers all around the place, but he’s my best younger bro. He’s family, y’know?’

Efnisien’s brain did something complicated. A puzzle piece slotted into place and something made sense. There was something in the connection between Kadek and Arden that made Efnisien think of Arden and his older brother Laurie. Had Arden replaced one toxic relationship with something healthier?

Or was it not like that at all?

Arden returned at that moment, and Efnisien almost forced a smile before he realised it would look fake as fuck. Arden sat next to him and sighed shortly.

‘Fucking Nathan,’ he muttered.

‘Is he _still_ trying to get you to come back and teach?’ Kadek said.

‘It happens every six months,’ Arden said, rolling his eyes. ‘They lose one of their _underpaid_ teachers, and they promote another student – usually a new one who doesn’t understand how much extra work they’re about to take on – and then that student loves it until they’re swamped, and they know me and know how much experience I have, and they start leaning on me to come teach for free. It’s Nathan’s turn, and if the patterns on track, it probably means he’s two or three months out from quitting, but I wish he’d hurry up. It’s not like they listen when you tell them they’re being rorted. But no one ever stays for long in a system like that unless it’s fulfilling emotional needs they can’t fulfil elsewhere.’

Efnisien had no idea that any of this had been going on. Did he need to ask Arden more questions about his life? Maybe he should text him more. Arden seemed stressed, and Efnisien didn’t know what to do about it.

‘Did he do the whole ‘duty’ and ‘family’ spiel?’ Kadek asked.

Arden nodded, then crossed one leg over the other and shook his head in frustration. ‘A family like that who loves you, sets you up financially in this day and age instead of getting well over twenty five hours of free labour and paying below minimum-wage for everything else while fleecing you blind. I get that there’s a system, it’s just one I don’t have patience with anymore. I love judo, but I don’t love the pyramid scheme of drawing the most dedicated students into free or underpaid labour while knowing that the person profiting at the very top will never fairly distribute funds. And my dojo isn’t as bad as some.’

‘It sounds bad,’ Efnisien said.

‘My one _pays_ its teachers _,’_ Arden said. ‘Most don’t. At all. You can get qualified, you can teach thirty hours a week, and often you’re still paying duties into the school. The idea is you have your head teacher, you know – the sensei – and he will have the Lexus or whatever, and the three storey mansion, but you recognise his mastery with money or whatever. The thing is, there’s no real way to break free of that system at the moment, and I don’t care enough about the politics to start my own branch. You think about the fact that you could do something else you really enjoy and actually _get paid_ , and I mean- Anyway, I love the dojo, but I’d sure like it if Nathan stopped cornering me about teaching.’

‘Tell him to fuck off,’ Efnisien said flatly.

‘Oh, I would, but he’s doing most of the free labour in the dojo right now for the sensei, so he is _beloved,_ and if I shit on him, I’m shitting on all the free access I get to the mats. Right now they like having me come in, because I know so much and they can be like, ‘Here’s Arden! He’s a judoka and a fourth-dan! And he’s still loyal to the club, and blah blah blah, let’s watch his form everyone, let’s do a group spar,’ but… There are sensitive egos at the top, even though you’d never guess it from all the philosophy stuff about ‘going within’ and peace and humility pinned to the walls.’

Efnisien had no idea it was so political. He felt a little like he’d managed to escape a lot of that, when Crielle and his parents had left. But Hillview had its politics, and the rest of the world did too.

He felt a wave of exhaustion flow over him again and nodded, then stared at the ropes blankly.

He must have lost track of time because he came back to a questioning note in Arden’s voice and realised – with some chagrin – that it clearly wasn’t the first time Arden had tried to get his attention.

‘You okay, Ef?’ Arden said softly.

‘Yeah, sorry,’ Efnisien said, not liking that Kadek was looking at him closely either. ‘Just- Y’know, had a real bad day yesterday, and it’s probably nothing.’

Arden said nothing, then took a sharp breath, then said nothing and abruptly exhaled. Then he looked at Kadek, and Efnisien had the distinct impression that some shit had just gone down and he had no idea what it was or what had caused it.

‘You had a bad day yesterday?’ Arden said.

_Oh. Fucking- Shit._

‘Um, no- Did I…say that? I meant. Fuck, I’m so out of it, I must’ve meant-’

All his words died in his throat when he saw the way Arden was looking at him. A mixture of hurt and disappointed and maybe even mad. It was the worst expression he’d ever seen, and he ducked his head automatically, though he still felt it pressing into him. Why couldn’t he fucking lie like he used to anymore? Why couldn’t he _lie?_

‘It’s just…’ Arden was taking his phone out of his pocket. Efnisien could see it in the corner of his eye, Arden showing their phone conversation directly to him. ‘It’s just I have, right here, texts from you saying that you were feeling actually normal yesterday, and look, you wrote _good.’_

‘S’nothing,’ Efnisien said. ‘I- I’m just out of it.’

‘I _knew_ something was _-_ Fuck.’

Arden stood up and walked a few steps away, and Efnisien chewed on the inside of his lip and then couldn’t handle the tension anymore. Not even for more than ten seconds. He was so much weaker than he used to be. He could handle this feeling for months and months when it was Crielle.

‘It was just that you were so nice to me on Sunday,’ Efnisien said in a rush. ‘And I didn’t want to tell you I felt bad after you were that nice, because that’s a shitty thing to do. That’s shitty. And I’m already so bad for you, and don’t deserve any of the things you do or say, and I just thought maybe you could get to have a nice time and _relax_ and not think that I was doing badly and have like, a nice fucking Monday!’

Arden stared at him, and Kadek rocked back on his hips and then concertedly looked at the consoles.

‘Hey, Kadek,’ Arden said slowly, without looking away from Efnisien, ‘can I just take Ef out to the garden for a moment so we can-’

‘Sure!’ Kadek said, nodding vigorously. ‘Sure you can! I have to check on the food anyway. Do whatever you need to, my guy. Hides his subdrop well, does he?’

‘Uh huh,’ Arden said absently. And then his voice firmed up. ‘Efnisien, follow me. We have to have a chat.’


	45. Maturity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's just get to the good stuff *rubs hands together*

Efnisien was absently noting the details in Kadek’s back garden to bury the panic that was blooming. Kadek had a really nice broad undercover deck area. The pot plants were everywhere, some of the plants two or three metres tall. He definitely had a gardener. The garden was large and had huge trees in it, and camellias, Crielle liked those. The deck itself was dark wood and there were huge heavy wind-chimes that gently knocked into each other, some made of metal, others made of wood, none of the chimes shorter than a metre in length. There was a huge stone buddha at the other end of the deck, surrounded by ferns, and it wasn’t the kind that Efnisien was used to seeing. The buddha had a weird kind of bobbly hat on.

He wished that’s what they were focusing on right now.

Arden shut the sliding door and paced quickly, then stopped and looked at Efnisien. He didn’t look mad anymore, but really upset.

‘This is going to be messy,’ Arden said finally, his words flowing together fast. ‘It’s going to be messy, I get that, but I want you to know that. Because like, I’m… feeling a _whole_ lot of things right now, and some of them are that I’m really fucking mad at myself for letting this happen in the first place.’

‘But…’ Efnisien fell silent, then folded his arms. ‘I mean, it doesn’t matter anymore, because I’m doing better today.’

‘I get that I can’t wave a wand and magically make you feel like you deserve stuff,’ Arden said. ‘But the purpose of you being truthful isn’t so I can _fix_ your thoughts. You tell me to be honest. You could’ve told me the truth _and_ still felt that way. But at least I could’ve tried to be there for you. I bet you have days where you see Dr Gary even when you hate yourself and think you shouldn’t go.’

Efnisien stared down at the decking. Damn it. Arden was using logic. Fucking _logic._ ‘Maybe.’

‘No, no ‘ _maybe_.’ I want _honesty._ And I’m mad that I let myself shoot ahead with kink, against my better judgement, because I wanted it so badly, and you could’ve been _really_ hurt because we didn’t have something better in place. And not only that, but I’m kind of embarrassed right now that this fucking- Like, that’s my mentor in there, and he got to see the exact moment my boyfriend was lying to me to hide subdrop or even just feeling terrible, and I have to wonder how many times you’ve done that in the past, and whether you’ve masked all of your misery successfully and if I’ve been doing things against your _consent,_ or pushing you without realising, because-’

‘No!’ Efnisien said, the word bursting out of him, because he suddenly understood some of the anguish on Arden’s face. ‘No, it wasn’t like that.’

‘But how would I know!’ Arden said, his voice desperate and loud. ‘How the fuck am I gonna know? Did you just miraculously wake up feeling bad yesterday morning? Or did you start feeling bad on Sunday, with me? Be _honest.’_

Efnisien’s mouth slammed together, his expression twisted. He didn’t know what to say, and he had to turn away when Arden’s expression crumpled.

‘I asked you, _repeatedly_ , if you were okay,’ Arden said. ‘I was there- I don’t understand how I could have missed… God. Okay. Okay, first thing, a moratorium on all kink stuff for now. Just- For my own sanity.’

Efnisien felt a bolt of liquid terror move through him at those words.

‘But-’

 _‘No,’_ Arden said. ‘Would you even _know_ if I was violating your consent at this point? And would I? We have all these things in place – honesty and communication being the most two important things – _because_ this stuff is complicated. _Because_ it’s so easy to violate consent. And even then, it still happens! But it’s a lot easier to deal with when a person can be responsible enough to say ‘Hey, you violated a limit of mine.’ And maybe I didn’t violate a limit with you, and I get that you’re in the dregs of subdrop and I get that you need comfort and maybe if you’d told me on Sunday I could’ve _given_ that to you and all of this wouldn’t have happened.’

‘Or maybe I would’ve felt miserable anyway,’ Efnisien said stubbornly. ‘I wanted you to feel good.’

‘You telling me you felt bad wouldn’t have made me feel bad _on Sunday,’_ Arden said. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took several deep breaths, then slapped both of his hands over his face and leaned his head backwards.

Efnisien was still stuck on the fact that apparently they weren’t allowed to do kink anymore. He felt ill, and walked over to one of the chairs – a really nice cushiony outdoor one in dark green – and slumped down. His stomach hurt badly, and eventually his arms dropped down to his belly. He felt like he was shielding it.

Arden paced nearby, agitated, amped up with a level of energy that Efnisien knew he couldn’t defuse. He felt like he if so much as reached out with a hand, he’d get an electric shock.

‘Okay,’ Arden said to himself. ‘Okay. Can you be honest now?’

‘Yes,’ Efnisien said. ‘I think.’

‘Can you run me through when you started to feel bad on Sunday?’

‘No, it’s just- I felt _good._ That was like the best day of my life. And then I just- I just felt like I didn’t deserve any of it. That was kind of the problem. I started to have like, glimpses of feeling like I shouldn’t be getting something that felt so nice d-during the scene, I think. And then after, while watching TV, it got worse and I d-didn’t want to think anymore, because I felt like… I felt like, you know, I’m such a fucking downer, and you’re the most generous, nicest person I’ve ever met, and I thought- I thought I could handle it. I thought it would be so terrible to do that to you, to ruin your day, and I still…kind of feel that way.’

‘And then yesterday rolled round and it was bad,’ Arden said. ‘How bad?’

‘Lots of intrusive thoughts,’ Efnisien said. ‘And I guess- Some suicidal ideation, but it was like- It wasn’t major.’

_‘Jesus.’_

‘It wasn’t major!’ Efnisien said. ‘It was just there. That’s all. I feel that a bit, okay? It’s not an emergency. And I didn’t like myself very much. Which is kind of normal.’

‘If it was normal, you wouldn’t have classed it as a bad day,’ Arden said mercilessly. ‘So was it a bad day or not?’

Efnisien made a short groaning sound. God this was worse than Dr Gary, even he’d back off sometimes. Arden was standing three metres away and there was an intensity in his entire being that made it seem like he was looming over him.

‘It was a bad day,’ Efnisien admitted. ‘Worse than normal.’

‘Right. And- Bear with me on this. If you’d told me on Sunday, or even Monday, and I could’ve… I don’t know, talked to you, do you think that would’ve helped?’

‘But you have a _life,’_ Efnisien said. ‘And you’re so busy, and-’

‘I know you know how to answer a question,’ Arden snapped, and Efnisien’s hand fluttered by his side, and then he stood abruptly and put more distance between himself and Arden.

‘I don’t like this,’ he said shakily. ‘I don’t like how you’re being.’

‘Efnisien, I just-’

‘I don’t like this,’ Efnisien said again, his panic spiralling upwards again. He and Crielle never argued liked this, she never got mad like this, but that tone – _I know you know how to answer a question._ He knew what that was like, and suddenly he felt small and utterly defenceless, and he was going to lose his mind that this was happening at Arden’s friend’s house and he wasn’t at home and he couldn’t _escape._

‘I have to go,’ Efnisien said, his voice breaking. ‘I have to go.’

‘Wait, wait- I’m sorry, I’m-’

‘No, _I’m_ sorry!’ Efnisien said, one hand fisted in his jumper, and the other nervously closing and opening by his side. ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I lied to you even if I don’t get why it’s so bad. But I don’t like this! You have every right- You can be mad and yell at me, or tell me I don’t know how to answer questions, because I know how I’m being. I knew I should’ve told you. I knew on Sunday. I _definitely_ knew on Monday. And I’ve felt guilty ever since. It never felt like a good decision to lie to you. It just felt like the _only_ one. It felt _right._ ’

Arden was silent, and Efnisien wondered if there was a way to get to the front of the house from the back garden. He had an idea of how to get home from here. It’d take a while, but he knew these streets better than the ones around his own apartment.

‘Thank you,’ Arden said softly.

‘What?’ Efnisien said, staring at him, bewildered.

‘You’re being honest. We can do something with honesty.’

‘You want _this?’_ Efnisien said, incredulous.

‘Yes,’ Arden said, his expression earnest. ‘This is good. We can do a lot with this. But we have a problem, which is that… You can’t be honest with me when you’re in a really bad place, _because_ of the bad place. And I’m going to have no idea when that’s happening.’

‘You said you knew, before,’ Efnisien said helplessly.

‘I had a feeling, but I’ve had feelings lots of times before, and I’m not a mind-reader and just a heads up, I really don’t want to be one, because that’s exhausting,’ Arden said. ‘That’s unfair emotional labour in general, but you can’t expect it from someone with PTSD, it’ll drive them nuts – I’m meant to become _less_ hypervigilant, not more; I can’t spend my time secretly thinking you’re always lying to me for my own protection.

‘I mean that’s why I asked you more than once how you were feeling. But if I think you’re…doing worse than you are when you tell me you’re okay, I’m not going to push you even harder, because what if you’re fine? That’s unfair on me, too. You can’t expect me to be the one doing the work to figure out exactly what’s happening with you. Imagine this relationship if I contacted you every five minutes being like, ‘But how are you _really?_ But how are you _really,_ really? _’’_

‘Oh god,’ Efnisien said, scrunching up his face. ‘That’d be the worst.’

‘But that’s the position I was put in,’ Arden said, his voice strained, though not loud like before, and not nearly as pushy. ‘I can’t do your work for you. Your job is to commit to honesty. It’s not always going to be easy, and maybe you can’t always do it, but I’m not comfortable- God, I’m not comfortable doing scenes without it. Efnisien, it might not seem like it, but we do _heavy_ stuff, especially mentally, emotionally.’

Efnisien dug his hand carefully into his belly, and Arden walked closer, then sat next to him on the long chair. They weren’t touching, but Efnisien was glad that Arden was closer.

‘I’m so mad at myself,’ Arden said.

‘Don’t be,’ Efnisien said.

‘Yeah, no, sweetheart. It doesn’t work that way. I’m kicking myself. I should’ve talked about the specifics of subdrop with you more, but I think as well, you don’t tell me when you have bad days in general do you? Since we met?’

‘Um,’ Efnisien drew a leg onto the couch, and one of his slippers fell off. ‘I guess not.’

‘Do you tell anyone?’

‘I have no one to tell,’ Efnisien said, then sighed. ‘No, I don’t even really tell Dr Gary until afterwards. He tells me I can call him when they’re really bad – which, I don’t think yesterday was at that level – but I never do.’

‘So this is an ongoing issue for you, in general,’ Arden said.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said.

‘It bothers me that I didn’t know how bad it was, even though we’ve talked about it before.’

‘I think it’s easy for me to assume you know a lot of stuff that you don’t know,’ Efnisien said. ‘And then I kind of like that you don’t know a lot of stuff about me. I like… That you don’t see how gross I am. Or- I dunno.’

Arden sighed, and Efnisien stared out into the garden. There was some kind of vegetable-greenhouse situation going on right at the back. A huge lap pool and spa running along one fence, surrounded by the leafy green fronds of palms and tree ferns. Efnisien imagined Kadek living here with his parents, arguing with his mum, and now he was forty and living in the same house and doing stuff with ropes. He wondered if Kadek’s family knew about his BDSM money.

‘I don’t want to stop doing scenes with you,’ Efnisien said quietly.

‘I don’t want to stop doing them either.’

‘So then _why_ -’

‘Safety,’ Arden said quietly. ‘Me feeling like a newbie all over again in a bad way and thinking how terrible it’d be if I did real damage to you, when you’re already so hurt. It’s one thing to make mistakes – everyone does that – but you’re… I don’t want to say fragile, because you’re so resilient, but it would be so easy to really harm you.’

‘I just wanted you to be happy,’ Efnisien said, feeling like a broken record. ‘I’m sorry I lied.’

‘I don’t want to be happy,’ Arden said.

‘What?’

‘My goal in life isn’t happiness,’ Arden said, looking at Efnisien seriously. ‘Happiness is just an emotion, like other emotions, and it’s not an endpoint or a goal. It’s not sustainable and it can’t last. People who aim for it will feel like they’re failing at life when it disappears, when that is literally what happiness is meant to do; biologically, it _can’t last_. Happiness can only be strong if you have a strong connection to your other emotions, too. Anger, grief, even disgust. The saddest you’ve ever been is also how happy you can be, in a way. But that means my goal isn’t happiness. It’s… well, I’m about to go all Hallmark on your ass, but I like authenticity. I’d much rather have an authentic experience with you than a happy one. Why, is your goal happiness?’

‘Um,’ Efnisien blinked, still trying to wrap his mind around what Arden had said. ‘I’ve never thought about it. I just assumed with you… I just… Shit. I thought I was doing you a favour.’

‘Whoops,’ Arden said.

‘Whoops,’ Efnisien echoed, and then pressed his hands into his aching belly. ‘You know- In the…interest of…honesty. Um. The last time I lied to someone, like in a pretty intentional way, she tried to murder me.’

‘Wh- _Huh?’_

‘My aunt,’ Efnisien said. ‘You know, she cut me out of the family. Just…with a knife.’

‘You- But- Hang on.’ Arden pressed his lips together and Efnisien thought he was about to lose it all over again, for a completely different reason. But he took a deep breath and said: ‘For doing something good…right?’

‘I stole evidence from her, so my cousin would win his case against her. But I hid it from her. Like, stealing the evidence, hacking her computer, and just turning against her in general. Disagreeing with her. When she found out, she tried to stab me to death. Here.’

He pressed his hands into his stomach and then stopped because the pain wasn’t getting any better.

‘This is the aunt you love and who you say gave you everything,’ Arden said, his voice dark.

‘I know,’ Efnisien said, tiredly. ‘I know. Dr Gary doesn’t like it either. How I am about all of it.’

‘Being lied to makes me feel like…’ Arden closed his eyes. ‘It makes me feel like I’m turning into Laurie at his worst. And I’m behaving in ways that are making my loved ones lie to me. Because I lied to him a lot, about how I felt. About what he was doing. I didn’t put up with it for long, and I told him it _hurt_ , too, but I also told him it was okay when he was crying after. I lied to him to make him feel better. When people lie to me to make me feel better, I can’t handle it. You’re not the only one with mental illnesses and triggers and shit, Ef. Maybe I’m more dependent on honesty in a relationship than the average person, but without it…I’m like- I’m a mess. It’s one of the many reasons I struggle with relationships. I don’t want to be pacified with lies. I can’t handle it.’

Efnisien didn’t know what to say. Maybe there was nothing to say in response to that. He felt bad, but he also wanted to help, and he didn’t have the words to make that happen. So he nodded.

‘I reacted badly,’ Arden said, pulling his knees up onto the chair and suddenly looking so small that Efnisien felt every inch of his height in response. He was overcome with a strange urge to shelter him, which was bizarre.

‘You were really upset,’ Efnisien said, as gently as he could. 

‘I’m sorry I yelled at you,’ Arden said. ‘I’m sorry I scared you.’

‘I’m sorry too. Sorry I didn’t get it. Sorry I hurt you.’

He still didn’t quite understand it, because he thought he’d been doing something good, something sacrificial. But it obviously hadn’t been good.

‘Okay,’ Arden said. ‘Things feel a bit less dire all of a sudden.’

‘But scenes are still not happening,’ Efnisien said carefully.

‘Just for now,’ Arden said. ‘Unless you think lying to me when you feel bad is going to be your go-to forever. And then maybe not just for now.’

‘You’re nothing like your brother,’ Efnisien said.

‘I am though,’ Arden said. ‘I have good qualities from him, but I worry about the bad ones. I talk about it with my therapist sometimes. Efnisien, I enjoy hurting people, and I enjoy having power over them during sex, and I enjoy having control over them, and I enjoy making them helpless, I enjoy when they cry or cuss me out and realise that I’m not stopping if they don’t safeword. You talk about the things you’ve done, and how you’re a monster. But everything I do – without very strict, firm rules and boundaries – is the definition of monstrousness, and even _with_ rules and boundaries what I do is still pathologised in psychology. I had to find a kink-friendly psych for that reason. And that’s…why I’m so attached to those rules and boundaries.’

‘Would you still want to do those things without the boundaries?’ Efnisien asked.

‘In real life? No,’ Arden said.

Efnisien heard a lot of other things in that response. Like maybe Arden fantasised about it, like maybe he sometimes imagined hurting people even if they didn’t want it. And he wondered if Arden got intrusive thoughts too, if he talked to his therapist about it, and he figured Arden probably did. It didn’t freak Efnisien out as much as he thought it would.

‘I’m mad because you wouldn’t let me help you,’ Arden said quietly, resting his chin on his knee. ‘And it’s what I like to do.’

‘Even after?’ Efnisien said. ‘When you’re busy and…doing all the other stuff you do?’

‘Yes,’ Arden said. ‘Maybe I couldn’t have dropped everything on Monday, but remember that time you walked home from the bookshop and I stayed on the phone with you? I’m really good at finding compromises so that I can help without necessarily having to stop my other commitments. Like, I could’ve told Kadek I’d help him another time and just seen you at your place today. I wanted you to meet Kadek, but not if you weren’t ready to see him.’

‘I kind of like him actually,’ Efnisien said. ‘He told me about rope stuff while you were on the phone. And he told me his parents used to own the house.’

‘Yeah, he’s a pretty open book. I’m glad you like him.’

‘I thought we’d still be yelling. You and me.’

‘You said you didn’t like it,’ Arden said. ‘And I realised I wasn’t communicating very well, and that a lot of stuff was going on. As it is with you, sweetheart. When mental illnesses collide, huh? If you can think of ways that you can be honest with me after scenes, I’d be happy to hear them.’

Efnisien felt a kind of despair at that, until he realised that Arden was giving him an answer, a way to figure things out and actually help. Because Efnisien did feel bad about lying, and he didn’t want to hurt Arden that way again. He knew he’d always conceal things to a point, that was the way he’d been raised, but…

Efnisien frowned. ‘I want to… tell you about stuff in my past, but you might think I’m making excuses.’

‘You’ve apologised for hurting me,’ Arden said. ‘I don’t know that I’d think you’re just making excuses.’

‘I think I was raised to lie about how I was feeling,’ Efnisien said, trying to imagine how he’d say it to Dr Gary. ‘I was only ever supposed to be like, happy or charming, or I dunno, murderous or sadistic. And I wasn’t supposed to be like, anything else. Ever. My aunt got mad or like…disappointed in me. Like I was doing it on purpose. So it feels like- Maybe it feels like when I really like someone, I want to make sure they know I’m trying to be happy for them. It’s like a gift, especially when they don’t realise I’m doing it. Because I never wanted- It was bad if my aunt noticed that I was doing it on purpose. It’s not- I don’t think I’ve realised before, because I’ve never done it for anyone else, except my cousin, a little. I try and make him think my life is better than it is. I don’t tell him how bad it really is.’

Arden was quiet, and when Efnisien looked over at him, he didn’t look mad or disappointed, but thoughtful, and…maybe sad.

‘I’m not good at this,’ Efnisien said.

‘You’re doing great,’ Arden said, in a way that was absent, not because he didn’t mean it, but like he believed it so completely that he didn’t even have to think to find the words. But then Arden blinked and looked at Efnisien and smiled ruefully. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t know how to… I don’t know.’

‘Me either.’

 _But you know what to do always,_ Efnisien thought. He watched as a small family of honeyeaters landed in a tree in the garden, chasing each other around and twittering and chirping. He didn’t feel like hunting them anymore. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at a bird and wanted to hurt it in the moment. It was so strange. It made him feel weirdly purposeless.

‘I don’t even think like…a safeword system would work,’ Efnisien said eventually. ‘Because I just get really convinced that you need me to be happy for you. For your sake. Like I’m trying to think of ways around it, like how I can say yellow or blue when things are hard, or I can give Dr Gary a number between one and ten. But I know what I’m like.’

‘Sometimes there’s no magic trick to get past decades of conditioning,’ Arden said. ‘I suppose we had to come up against reality at some point.’

‘I don’t- I don’t just want to give up because- Unless you’ve decided I’m too hard, or-’

‘No, that’s not it,’ Arden said.

‘Can I…sit closer to you?’

Arden’s expression twisted. ‘I- Look we’re gonna hug _so_ hard in few minutes, but I can’t do closeness right now. I’m all- Just- Not to use an overused word, but kind of triggered. And I can’t do closeness when I feel like that.’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said, trying to swallow down his guilt so he could stay functional. It felt like it took a Herculean amount of effort. ‘That makes sense.’

He felt terrible, but they were talking, not yelling. Arden hadn’t run away from him, or kicked him out, or driven him home. They were still sitting side by side on the couch. And Efnisien was determined to…at least be honest now, even if he was really bad at it.

‘This reminds me of when like- When I got jumped in the street and I didn’t tell you, and you wouldn’t let us do stuff until I opened up about it,’ Efnisien said. ‘And I think I got better for a while…’

‘You did,’ Arden said.

‘What if I told you after?’ Efnisien said. ‘That I was doing badly? Like, I could maybe have told you today. That I’d had a bad time. It’s delayed, but that’s better than nothing, right?’

‘But then what are you going to do when you need someone in the moment?’

‘I don’t really understand that,’ Efnisien said. ‘How would I know if I needed someone? I’ve never needed anyone when I feel like that. I grew out of it.’

‘What about- What about what you _want?_ ’

‘What do you mean?’ Efnisien said. ‘I hate myself. I _want_ to die, or at least make myself suffer.’

‘But isn’t there a part of you that wants something else? If you’re making yourself suffer, you must be taking away things you want.’

Efnisien thought of the sugar he didn’t let himself have in his porridge. He winced. ‘I guess. I want things I’m not allowed.’

‘Could you say _that_ to me?’ Arden said. ‘Like what if you texted me and told me that instead? You wouldn’t have to say you were having a bad day, or why, but you could tell me that you just want things you’re not allowed. As a red flag or something, a sign that I could reach out to you.’

‘But I always want things I’m not allowed,’ Efnisien said.

‘Oh boy,’ Arden said softly.

‘Maybe…’ Efnisien bit at his lower lip a few times and then tugged at his sleeves, wishing he had a fidget dice or something. ‘Maybe I could practice outside of scenes, and just…send you an emoji or something when I’m having a bad time. And you don’t have to reply or do anything. But you’ll know. It might be easier for me to let you know if it’s not immediately like, connected to you being _amazing_ in a scene. And then maybe…I’ll learn how to tell you after a scene.’

‘If we do a scene again, I want you to stay the night,’ Arden said. ‘In the future.’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said, way too quickly. Arden looked at him, and Efnisien blushed. ‘Sorry.’

‘I said _if,’_ Arden said, and then smiled. ‘But I like that idea. Because goddamn it, I feel like you pack all of your misery away until you get home. I checked in during _Bake Off,_ and afterwards, I must’ve asked you- Never mind, you know how many times I asked you how you were doing. Maybe we could make it a ‘no obligation’ emoji. So you just let me know, and instead of dropping everything, I can send you something in acknowledgement, like a heart or something. And that way you’ll know that I know, but… you don’t have to feel like I’m dropping everything or like I’m putting pressure on myself to be there for you. And if you want to talk more about why you’re having a hard time, you can tell me.’

‘I did tell you I had a hard session,’ Efnisien pointed out. ‘With Dr Gary.’

‘That’s true. You are getting better. I don’t think I realised how far back you were starting in this. What did… What did your aunt do to you when you weren’t happy enough by her standards?’

‘Dunno,’ Efnisien said evasively. He pressed his forehead into his knee and shrugged, before looking up again. ‘Sometimes not much. Sometimes it was just a look, or she would tell me that I wasn’t being very charming. Or that I was being too childish.’

‘And- Oh,’ Arden said. ‘You said she hit you, sometimes.’

‘Not much,’ Efnisien said. ‘Like open-handed slaps. Compared to my uncle… She just had ways of letting me know she didn’t like how I was being.’

‘It sounds like she didn’t like _you.’_

Efnisien stilled, and then his leg dropped back to the ground and he turned to face Arden, unexpectedly hurt. Arden looked over to him, and his expression shifted from the weariness of before, to alarm.

‘I’m sorry,’ Arden said quickly, ‘it’s just-’

‘My parents didn’t _want_ me,’ Efnisien said, ‘and she took me in, and she-’

‘We have been here before,’ Arden said, holding up his hands. ‘It’s clearly complicated. I’m just- Well, probably honest to a fault. I’m sorry. I know it’s a hot button topic for you.’

Efnisien’s breathing was shallow, he swallowed roughly, and then had to force himself to sit back properly again.

 _It sounds like she didn’t like_ you.

Arden had said it so easily. Efnisien’s gut twisted.

‘Maybe,’ Arden said quietly, ‘you feel like it’s hard to be honest with people you care about, because honesty never led anywhere good for you.’

‘But… It’s- I mean I get that with some people, it doesn’t always end badly,’ Efnisien said. ‘Like, sessions went so much better with Dr Gary when I started just telling him stuff. And obviously, like, you don’t… You don’t- I don’t think you h-hate me or anything.’

‘Okay,’ Arden said abruptly. ‘Come here.’

Arden reached out with an arm, gesturing rapidly. And Efnisien looked at him, feeling uncertain, then scooted over on the couch and felt like something was coming together when Arden hooked an arm around him and drew him close. Efnisien kept his hands in his lap, making sure he didn’t accidentally touch Arden anywhere.

‘I _don’t_ hate you,’ Arden said. ‘I like you a lot. Listen, how about we try the emoji thing, okay? Even if you end up doing it all the time, because you don’t know when you should be doing it. Worst comes to worst, I send you an emoji or a gif or something in response. I still think you knowing someone out in the world cares about you when you’re having a bad time is better than how it is now. I _know_ you don’t understand. I can tell you don’t get why I prefer it. But I want honesty as a gift, rather than fake happiness, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said.

‘As for deserving, that’s… Other subs feel that way too. It might help to think of it like this: I don’t dominate you because you _deserve_ to be dominated, I do it because I _want_ to do it, _so much,_ and you like giving me what I want. It has nothing to do with deserving. You say I’m nice to you in scenes, Efnisien, like you don’t see that I’m also pushing you hard. I made you stay in an uncomfortable position for a long time. I pushed you into the idea of non-rope bondage and scolded you when you broke out of it. I didn’t prompt you for safewords as often. And I exposed your skin, which is something you’re sensitive about. Maybe you’ve gone through so much in life, that none of that stuff counts as pushing to you, but I can tell I’m challenging you in the moment. All of that could have been directly or indirectly responsible for you crashing so badly.’

Efnisien nodded, because he felt meek all of a sudden, and also Arden was next to him, and right there, and he was starting to feel like he couldn’t handle too much more conversation. His stomach still hurt, he was overwhelmed, Arden didn’t hate him.

‘Do you want to yell at me some more?’ Efnisien said. ‘You can if you want. If that’ll help.’

‘Okay, _no,_ I don’t want to do that. I don’t like myself when I get like that. But I guess you had to see it sooner or later. I’m not- I’m not carefree and easy-going all the time, and while I’ve had way more practice coping with my mental shit than you have, sometimes it bursts out.’

‘You pulled out your phone to call me out and everything,’ Efnisien said.

‘What about you? Do you want to yell at me? I was unfair, putting you on the spot like that in front of Kadek.’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘I’m not mad. I’m just… worried I’ll fuck up again.’

‘You _will,_ baby, and so will I. That’s life. You’re doing your best, and so am I. And here we are, and the world hasn’t ended.’

Efnisien nodded, and let his eyes fall half-closed. The world turned to blurs of green and dark brown in front of him.

‘So… How did you deal with arguments as a kid?’ Arden said, squeezing his shoulder. ‘In general?’

‘I mean- I didn’t argue with anyone except my cousin. And y’know, if it wasn’t going my way, I tortured him.’

Arden made a sound and then said: ‘I really wish that was hyperbole.’

‘Same,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘You regret it?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘I mean, on a fucking selfish level, maybe he wouldn’t… Maybe things would be different now between us. But on another level that’s just like- He was a kid, and what I did to him went way beyond how anyone should be to anyone, let alone family to family. No one stood up for him, and my aunt encouraged me, and I just kept doing these terrible things to him, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it at least some of the time. So like- I mean I haven’t wanted to argue that way in a while. _Oh,_ except with Dr Gary.’

‘You argue with him?’

‘I want to fucking cut into him sometimes,’ Efnisien said quietly. ‘That’s- I mean less and less. But sometimes he says something and I just- Like- I don’t know how else to handle what I’m feeling. But then I don’t do those things, and I’m still feeling those emotions, so maybe I do know how to handle it. I don’t know. I’ve never wanted to hurt you.’

‘You might one day,’ Arden said. ‘I’ve thought about it.’

Efnisien wanted to beg him not to, wanted to ask him to put it out of his mind. But he couldn’t. It was pragmatic, it was realistic, and it made Efnisien feel like he wanted to take steel wool to his skin and his insides.

‘I had intrusive thoughts in the beginning about it,’ Efnisien admitted. ‘About you. But they went away so fast. It was nice, actually. It’s been nice, not to think that way about you. I’m having those thoughts less about Dr Gary too. It’s…’

Efnisien frowned.

‘It’s nice, not to think that way in general. It still happens but not like before. I get weird intrusive thoughts now. About serial killers. I don’t- I hate them. I had so many yesterday.’

‘Baby,’ Arden crooned. ‘I wish you’d texted me.’

Arden’s hand came up and gently petted the side of Efnisien’s head. And Efnisien still felt fragile, still felt uncertain, still _hated_ that they weren’t going to be doing kink until a new system was figured out, but something in him settled. He begrudgingly acknowledged that if Arden had been able to do something like this; reassure him on the concept of deserving late Sunday afternoon, he _might_ have felt less terrible the next day.

A small part of his brain reminded him that this was exactly why he wasn’t supposed to have it.

Maybe he wasn’t. But Arden got upset when he didn’t talk more, when he didn’t give Arden a chance to help. And that mattered more.

Dr Gary probably wouldn’t like that mentality, but Efnisien had spent the first decade and a half of his existence putting someone’s wellbeing, happiness, and life ahead of his own. It was frightening to realise that already, Efnisien preferred being able to offer up himself to Arden instead.

Maybe Crielle _didn’t_ like him. It was impossible to contemplate. The opposite was even more alien – maybe he didn’t like her – and yet it teased at the edges of his consciousness, like a crack in the foundations of a building that was supposed to stay stable forever.

He sighed explosively, but his shoulders relaxed.

‘You know,’ Arden said, ‘I still only have pieces of the things you’ve been through. Everything I learn is so horrifying and awful. I can’t believe she stabbed you. Like you said you’d been stabbed but I just never… God, I don’t know what I thought. Who does that to someone? Were you fighting back at the time?’

‘No, I just kind of stood there and let her. I felt bad because I hurt her in the first place.’

‘Baby,’ Arden said under his breath, and pulled Efnisien closer, until he was basically sliding down into Arden’s lap. One of his arms draped over Efnisien’s shoulder, the other curved around his head. ‘How many stitches was it?’

‘Uh. Like… It was stitches and staples, and it was about seventy all up.’

‘For a stab wound?’ Arden said, his voice rising in pitch.

‘For like five. They were pretty clean, but the knife was big and um. Yeah.’

‘That’s what you don’t want me to see or touch,’ Arden said. ‘Because she gave them to you?’

‘They’re really ugly,’ Efnisien said, his hands folded over his stomach. ‘I hate them. I betrayed her. I betray people, Arden.’

‘Yeah, you’d hope if I was threatening someone’s life and hurting them all the time, you’d fucking betray me to save them. Sorry. Sorry, Ef. I know you have strong feelings about all of it. You’re still really _in_ it all, aren’t you? I didn’t realise how much… or _how_ it still influenced you. I’ve been wanting to let you tell me stuff in your own time, thinking that my experience with like, _stuff,_ would give me an edge anyway. But it doesn’t. Not as much as I’d hoped.’

‘Are you feeling better than before?’ Efnisien asked. He was aware of Arden’s smallness today, and he didn’t know what to do about that. Even now, even feeling weirdly protected and okay… He just never thought how the ghost of Laurie could impact Arden, and how Efnisien had the power to hurt him so easily because of it. Not with knives or fire or his hands, but by hiding the truth.

‘Yeah,’ Arden said quietly. ‘Still a bit…fucked, but much better than before. I’m at Kadek’s house, which helps. And I’m with you, and that helps.’

‘Even though I made everything go bad in the first place.’

‘This is a shared mistake, sweetheart,’ Arden said, his arms tightening around Efnisien. ‘This one’s on both of us. But okay, a little bit more on you.’

‘Rude,’ Efnisien muttered. ‘But fair, I guess.’

‘You want to send me an emoji?’ Arden said. ‘To let me know how you’re doing?’

Efnisien could hear the hint of a smile in his voice. But he didn’t need to send an emoji.

‘I mean I could,’ Efnisien said. ‘But I’d be lying.’

‘Aw,’ Arden said, ruffling Efnisien’s hair. ‘Thanks for talking to me today, I appreciate how hard-’

The sliding door rumbled in its tracking and Efnisien and Arden both looked sidelong to see Kadek half-hanging out of the door.

‘Soooo,’ Kadek said, looking between them both. ‘Are you guys gonna come and like, help me with this rope? Some time in the next…decade or so? Come on already! Up and at ‘em! Mush mush! Soft cuddle time can come later! I can tell you’re not fighting anymore. Thought I’d come out and you’d be fucking, which okay – hot – but _come onnn,_ I’m tired of this rope, you deal with it.’

Efnisien made a small squeaking noise, and Arden burst into laughter. He gently jostled Efnisien into a sitting position, and Arden looked at him, opened his mouth to say something and then Kadek clapped his hands loudly.

‘Go! Go! Go!’ he shouted, still clapping. ‘Let’s _gooooo!’_

‘Fucking hell,’ Arden muttered under his breath, then turned to Kadek. ‘I hate you. I was having a _moment_.’

‘Come on! Come on! Come on!’ Kadek shouted. ‘Let’s go _team!_ Right now! Now! Right _now!’_

‘I’ve never felt like a sports team before, but this comes close,’ Efnisien said, getting up slowly, accommodating the tense muscles in his stomach. A few seconds later Kadek and Arden both laughed, and Efnisien smiled in spite of himself, and thought that yeah, okay, sometimes it was better to be truthful.


	46. Giving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is so long. Expect it to be _Game Theory_ length, lol. (More chapters, the same amount of words, lol). I actually picked the title of this chapter before I saw the _Given_ movie this week, and now I’m just enjoying this little moment of serendipity.
> 
> Also it’s been a wild week. We had to emergency evacuate our house at 2.00am due to life-threatening/home-threatening bushfires (that claimed 86 homes), and while I’m home now, that’s been…really just the tip of the iceberg of a terrifying and traumatising week. (Also I broke my toe, my Opa died, we went into an extremely restrictive lockdown, and the car broke down *while we were evacuating as embers fell into our garden*) but aNYWAY, priorities means here's a _Falling Falling Stars_ chapter and I hope you enjoy it <333

Efnisien’s palms were soft and waxy. He had a bar of beeswax in his left hand and was running the jute rope along it with his right, and after the first two or three lengths of rope, it was easier, he’d finally gotten the hang of it. His job was to oil the first batch of ropes with jojoba oil, and now he was working on the second batch with wax. It did make the rope feel pretty silky, but it was still jute, and running the ropes through his hand was a weird experience. They weren’t really soft, they weren’t really smooth, they had what Kadek referred to as ‘tooth’ and ‘friction.’

Arden had the way cooler job, though he didn’t seem as pumped to be running a rope just over the flames of a gas burner while all the little hairs burned off. He had to make sure he didn’t burn the rope at the same time. Efnisien watched in fascination at first, getting distracted by the singeing and the smell and the open flame, and then Arden had given him a look, and Efnisien had gone back to what he was doing.

Kadek was cooking. The smells in the house made Efnisien think he was going to eat even though his stomach still hurt. Kadek moved deftly. He chopped food so swiftly that Efnisien wondered if he’d had some kind of training, but he hadn’t mentioned it among the other things he’d done. Maybe he just really loved cooking.

Efnisien still felt shaken by the knowledge that he and Arden weren’t going to be doing scenes again any time soon, but he also understood why Arden needed to pull back. He’d seen the panic on Arden’s face, he hated that he’d made him so afraid, so hurt. While he didn’t fully understand why anyone would care so much about him having a bad day, he did get that Arden hated it, and he didn’t want to do anything that Arden hated.

It had been easy at first to think that Arden was doing it _to_ him, pulling back on those scenes. But even as Efnisien felt like he was drowning, it became clear that Arden was doing it _for_ them both. Something altered now, so it would be safer when returned later.

Efnisien pursed his lips at the rope and still felt sulky either way. But he was pretty sure Arden wasn’t happy about it either, which was weird. It was so weird that Arden wanted to do scenes with him, that he enjoyed them.

‘How are you going with all of this?’ Arden said quietly. When Efnisien looked up, Arden nodded his head down to the bundles of rope.

‘I dunno. It’s strange,’ Efnisien said. ‘Like- Seeing it makes me think of… I can’t not think of like BTK, or even Berdella. But doing this- I don’t think any of them ever did this, or cared about their ropes this much. Maybe they made sure they were strong, and wouldn’t break. But why would they have conditioned them for their victims? I can’t imagine them doing that. And then it gets easier to do this.’

‘I don’t think they would have conditioned their ropes either,’ Arden said quietly, focusing on what he was doing again.

‘I still think of them,’ Efnisien said. ‘In the background. I don’t know if that’s gonna go away.’

He was trying to be honest. He hated it in theory. In practice, it felt weirdly neutral, around Arden.

‘If that ever gets to you in a scene in the future, I want you to safeword and tell me before it gets too bad,’ Arden said firmly. ‘Yellow or blue, it doesn’t matter. Tell me you’re thinking about it.’

‘But sometimes I think about it and it doesn’t do anything,’ Efnisien said. ‘I get all these flashes, I can’t tell everyone about all of them, most of them don’t result in anything. It’s why I’m only supposed to put tallies on the board if something stays with me, five minutes or longer.’

‘I don’t mean if you just think about it,’ Arden said, eyes flicking up. ‘I said if it gets to you. If you’re starting to feel really affected by it. And I know what you mean. I probably think of Laurie like a hundred times a day. Or I think about things connected to him. I think most of those thoughts would disturb other people, but I’m used to them and they don’t actually like…stop me from enjoying myself or getting on with my life in the moment, you know? There’s a difference between something passing through like a ship in the night, and something about to crash on a rock. And I guess in that shitty metaphor, you have to be the lighthouse that notices when that’s about to happen, and let me know.’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said. ‘I’ll try, Arden.’

Arden smiled at him.

‘How are you doing?’ Efnisien said awkwardly. ‘With everything?’

‘Better for having talked,’ Arden said. ‘And a bit tired.’

‘Same,’ Efnisien said.

‘This one’s done,’ Arden said a few minutes later, recoiling the rope with quick and efficient movements. Even though the bundles of rope that he was singeing had to be washed again to get the soot off, Arden still coiled each one neatly. ‘How are you doing?’

Arden turned off the gas burner and crawled across the mats on the floor, sitting by Efnisien’s side. He placed his hand on one of the treated ropes and smiled.

‘This is great. Not greasy, but good and soft. You’ve got a good feel for it.’

‘It’s weird,’ Efnisien said quietly. His eyes darted to Kadek, but he wasn’t really paying attention to them, because he was rummaging around in his walk-in pantry instead, humming to himself. But even if Kadek was listening, Efnisien felt like he could talk about this stuff around him. ‘Have you told Kadek much?’

‘No,’ Arden said, slinging his arms over his bent knees and leaning back against the sofa. ‘Well… Okay, yes, but not details. He knows you have trauma in your childhood, and you associate BDSM with serial killers, because I needed advice in the beginning about it and I talked to him. And he knows we have a relationship, and he knows you’re new to all of this. I thought maybe it would help you – doing this, or seeing it – to demystify ropes a bit, to know what goes into them. Like, how much we want the models we’re working with to be safe and comfortable, even if they want a scene that’s uncomfortable, or painful.’

‘Yeah, I get that,’ Efnisien said.

His hand felt tingly and warm. He’d run a lot of lengths of rope through it, and he stopped after the most recent ten metre length and curled stiff fingers. His palm and knuckles ached.

Arden grasped his hand easily. He didn’t ask for permission like he used to. Somewhere along the way, Arden had become more proprietary towards him, like once they’d stepped across the line into a relationship, he knew he could just take Efnisien’s hand and it would be fine.

Efnisien liked that. He liked that Arden felt that way, and wanted to touch his hand, and took it because he could.

Arden spread his fingers apart and frowned, pressing his thumb into the redness discolouring all of Efnisien’s palm.

‘You have to stop now,’ Arden said.

‘But it’s fine.’

‘No, it’s not. You’re not used to this. Look.’

Arden held his palm flat, and then took Efnisien’s hand and placed it over his. He moved Efnisien’s fingers over callouses on his palm and fingertips.

‘Years of working with natural fibre ropes like jute,’ Arden explained. ‘I like it, but your hands aren’t used to any of this. You have to stop now, Ef. The skin’s red because it’s irritated and I would say lightly abraded too, even if it doesn’t feel like it. It’s okay, you’ve done a lot already, and you didn’t have to do anything at all.’

‘Lunch is gonna be up soon anyway,’ Kadek said absently from the kitchen.

‘Is any of it spicy?’ Arden asked.

‘Yes! Some of it is. But since you brought literally the whitest boy over, not _all_ of it is spicy. And some of it is heat optional.’

Efnisien was grateful, because he was pretty sure his gut’s tolerance of chili peppers and anything that caused a heat reaction would be something along the lines of _oh god no._

He absently went to pick up another bundle of rope. Arden’s hand curled firmly over his wrist.

‘No, sweetheart,’ he said, squeezing gently. ‘Go ask Kadek what he’s making. That way you can figure out what you can eat and what you can’t.’

‘And he can help me put stuff on the table!’ Kadek announced loudly.

Efnisien looked at Arden for a long moment, then nodded and pushed up. His hand immediately went to his belly because it felt strained, like he was pulling on an overtired muscle. He noticed the way Arden stared at his hand, his stomach, like he was seeing it all for the first time. Embarrassed, he dropped his hand.

When he walked over to the island in the kitchen, Kadek handed him some paper towels.

‘For the beeswax,’ Kadek said. ‘It clings to your hands otherwise. Can feel gross.’

‘Thank you,’ Efnisien said, cleaning his fingers off, his palms, and wincing as he rubbed the paper towel over the skin. Arden was right, Efnisien’s palm was sore now, as though the skin had settled down and realised he’d gone too far.

He stood there, feeling awkward. There were more pots on the stove, the oven door was open. There was way too much food for three people.

‘What…are you making?’ Efnisien said eventually, remembering that Arden had told him to ask.

‘Sate,’ Kadek said immediately, pointing to the grill shelf in the oven. ‘Well, _satay,_ but yeah, skewers of meat and I’m doing two sauces. There’s bumbu kacang over there, which is basically peanut sauce, or the thing that everyone thinks satay is – it’s not by the way – and there’s kecap manis over there because I prefer it with beef sate.’

There was a bottle of what looked like soy sauce, but instead it said kecap manis on it.

‘That’s _basically_ a sweet, thick soy sauce,’ Kadek said. He pointed to a plate with circular fat white disks piled on it. ‘Lontong, which is rice cake. That’s bland as fuck, and even your white ass can handle that. God I love lontong so much. It’ll taste good with the gado gado, which is ah, well, I guess kind of a salad but it’s better than most salads. You’ll see what I mean. And then ayam gulai, which is basically chicken curry, that one’s spicy but you can still try some. And then there’s extra rice over there.’

Kadek pointed to an appliance on the counter that was plugged into a wall socket, and Efnisien frowned at it.

‘And I had some leftovers so there’ll also be some bakmi goreng, which is just mie goreng, which- You still don’t know what that is? Just egg noodles. Noodles and meat and stuff.’

‘Hell yeah,’ Arden said from the floor, where he was back to scorching threads off the ropes again. ‘You got people coming over later?’

‘Yeah,’ Kadek said. ‘Busy night planned.’

‘So we don’t have to eat it all?’ Efnisien said hopefully.

‘Oh, you have to eat it all,’ Kadek said seriously.

Efnisien stared at him. Far too many seconds went by before Kadek’s sober face split into a grin and he started laughing.

‘Oh no, you’re too easy. He’s too easy, Arden!’ Then to Efnisien he said: ‘Arden’s going to eat you alive. And to boot, you’re not even calling me sir! So he hasn’t even taught you any rules yet.’

‘Uh,’ Efnisien looked over at Arden, who had an exasperated-annoyed look on his face which Efnisien could tell wasn’t directed at him.

‘ _Don’t_ call him sir,’ Arden said. ‘Ever. He doesn’t deserve it.’

‘Yeah,’ Kadek said enthusiastically. ‘Actually, real talk, if you ever go to a club or something, and some jumped up fake top demands you call them sir or master and they’re _not_ your dom, you stand like this…’ Kadek shuffled his feet shoulder width apart and squared his shoulders. ‘And then you look them right in the eye – or in your case you look down on them because you’re tall – and you say: ‘Go fuck yourself.’’

Efnisien looked over to Arden to check if that was right, and Arden was nodding to himself as he ran the rope about an inch above the gas burner.

‘Won’t they get mad?’ Efnisien said.

‘Yeah and then get the dungeon master,’ Kadek said. ‘Or have one nearby so you can have your ‘fuck off’ moment and then you have someone there to back you up.’

Kadek drew the grill shelf out of the oven and turned what looked like well over thirty small skewers of meat. The smell was amazing though, and Efnisien thought he really was going to eat something even if it ended in misery later. He’d had a stressful day, which almost guaranteed a painful evening.

When Kadek was done, Efnisien pointed to the appliance on the counter. ‘You don’t…need to cook your rice over an open flame? Like, on the stove?’

Kadek stared at him. ‘You haven’t heard of a rice cooker?’

‘Um. Well… No.’

‘My dude, my guy, electricity was _invented_ for rice cookers.’

‘That’s not true,’ Arden said.

‘But it _should_ be true,’ Kadek said firmly. ‘Because that’s a far better story than it being invented for lighting or…something. I failed history. Anyway, you wash your rice, dump it in the rice cooker, add water, and let the rice cooker do its magic. And then it makes that happy beeping noise and your rice is done! The reason this is taking a while is because I put like six cups in. Poor little cooker. It’s a beast though, it can do fifteen cups.’

Efnisien walked to the rice cooker and stared at it. And then he stared into it. He liked rice. He wondered if rice cookers were expensive. If he didn’t have to put a pot over the stove, then he could use it. After all, microwaves could be used to set things on fire, but he’d never tried it before. As long as he couldn’t see an open flame, or a flame on a burner, he could generally trust himself with appliances.

‘Are they a lot of money?’ Efnisien asked.

‘Well, it depends,’ Kadek said. ‘Big ones like this that can do fancy shit can be expensive. But the small ones for like uni students aren’t too bad. They make like two cups of rice, but that’s still a lot. Actually! Wait there a moment.’

Kadek turned a dial down on the stove and then rushed away down the same corridor Arden had walked down.

‘He’s always like this,’ Arden said. He seemed weirdly calm around Kadek, like he could peace out while Kadek was buzzing around the house.

‘Is he- Like you? With the, um, sometimes having too much energy?’

‘No,’ Arden said. ‘He’s… He’s just like that, honestly. I mean it’s not ruining his life and he doesn’t need medication for it. He can seem…brusque? But he’d give you the coat off his own back if he thought you needed it, and while he makes jokes, he takes ropework really seriously.’

‘Super seriously,’ Kadek said, coming back slightly out of breath. He held a much smaller rice cooker in his hands. ‘Here.’

He gave it to Efnisien.

Efnisien stared down at the rice cooker in his hands and then looked up at Kadek in confusion.

‘What?’

‘Well, I don’t need that one anymore. He’s older, but he got me through moving out and going to uni, and he makes good rice. It’s a three cup cooker, and I would’ve just thrown it out eventually.’

‘Are you giving this to me?’ Efnisien said, feeling even more shocked than before.

‘Yeah! It was just going to be ditched anyway. Seriously there’s _nothing_ wrong with it, except that it’s old and there are better models. If you like it, then you can get yourself a nicer one.’

‘But- Do you want any…money? Or…’

‘Nah,’ Kadek said, waving his hand and going back to check on the sate. ‘Okay this is basically done, that rice cooker better hurry the fuck up with my rice.’ His head popped up over the counter again from where he was bending down by the oven. ‘Look, it cost me like fifty bucks. I am not spoiling for money. And introducing people to rice cookers is great. _Use_ it. Tell me it isn’t the best thing. If you google like, recipes and shit, you can do fancier stuff in there. Even in the basic ones. I used to dump like frozen veg and stock in with my rice just because Mum would’ve killed me if I didn’t attempt to eat a vegetable sometimes.’

Efnisien stared down at the rice cooker that he clutched to his chest. He looked at Arden in amazement, but Arden wasn’t even looking at him. He was focusing on the rope, like he was in a trance.

‘But…’ Efnisien said, staring down at the rice cooker.

He didn’t know people did things like this, and he suddenly thought Kadek might be one of the nicest people he’d ever met. Crielle and Lludd had a ton of extra shit they were never using all around the house, and they would rather have ensured it went into a dump than went to anyone they knew. The rice cooker was white and rounded had a couple of scuff marks on it but was otherwise fine.

‘I’ll show you how to use it later,’ Kadek said absently. ‘It’s honestly not hard. At all. A seven year old could do it.’

Efnisien thought about the kinds of things he was doing at seven and felt light-headed. He gingerly eased the rice cooker down onto some space on the counter and kept staring at it. After a while, he noticed Kadek looking at him, and realised he must’ve had some kind of…expression on his face.

‘Um. If you’re sure, thank you,’ Efnisien said.

Kadek opened his mouth, then closed it. He half-smiled. ‘No worries. And I am sure. If you decide you don’t want it, and it still works, you can pass it on to someone else.’

He brought out some plates and other cutlery, then pushed them towards Efnisien.

‘Can you go set that up for me?’

Efnisien nodded, and did it automatically. It was way less crockery and cutlery than Crielle would use, but it was also more than he used at home. He was surprised to see no chopsticks, instead there were spoons and forks.

After that, he was in charge of putting dishes on the table, though Kadek took the heavier stuff over, and Arden eventually came up and helped too after cleaning sooty fingers. Kadek and Arden talked cheerfully about the gathering that Kadek was having that night.

Within minutes, everything was set up on the table. The rice cooker sang its little melody, and Kadek said he needed to go fluff it, and then a mound of that was on the table as well.

Kadek pointed to each dish and said ‘spicy’ or ‘not spicy’ for Efnisien’s benefit. So Efnisien ended up with some of the gado gado – which looked amazing – and the rice and lontong, as well as some of the sate sticks and the peanut sauce. He couldn’t help but add a spoonful of the curry – what Kadek had called the gulai – just to try it, and some of the egg noodles, because it all smelled so good. It was probably the biggest plate of food he’d served himself in years, and it wasn’t as big as Arden’s or Kadek’s.

Efnisien ate cautiously, monitoring his stomach. He really liked the lontong. The disks of compressed, soft rice were bland – like Kadek had said they would be – but with a little bit of sauce they tasted really good. Efnisien liked them based on texture alone. He enjoyed everything he ate, though the gulai was too spicy for him. Halfway through he realised he’d seriously over-estimated how much he could eat and hesitated for a long time, his fork hovering over his plate.

It would be rude not to finish, but there was no way he could finish.

Kadek and Arden were in the middle of conversation about trying to find new suppliers for jute rope. Apparently the place they were using had stepped up the jute processing oil, which meant Kadek was having to do too much work to soak it out again. But the other companies all seemed to produce rope that wasn’t as high in quality. The conversation was filled with technical jargon, and Efnisien was glad to not have to talk.

After a while Arden looked over at him and smiled. ‘You can’t eat anymore?’

Kadek looked at him too, and Efnisien wanted to vanish into a hole.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking at Kadek.

‘Huh? Dude, don’t worry about it,’ Kadek said. ‘I’ll pack it up with some other stuff you liked, and you can take it home. I made a ton. It all reheats well. I mean the lontong gets a bit dry and like- But it’s good, trust me!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Look, the alternative is you force yourself to keep eating and then you feel miserable, and that’s like, not what I was going for. Did you like it?’

Efnisien nodded, and then pointed to the gado gado. ‘That was really good. I mean it was all really good. But that was like- I dunno, I just…wasn’t expecting it to be that good. Like it was good, but just- Fuck.’

Kadek burst into laughter. And then he helped himself to seconds of the bakmi goreng and Efnisien felt relieved that no one seemed to be mad at him for not finishing his food. He stared over at the rice cooker that Kadek had given to him – at least for now – on the counter and then looked down at the plate of food.

That feeling of deserving and not deserving was swamping him again. Why did he get to be here, and not someone else? Why him? Was he cheating the system? What about all those girls he hurt? Were they getting to do things like this? Were they having a good time somewhere?

He chewed on the inside of his lip and then traced patterns underneath the table with nervous fingers. After a while he pulled his phone out and stared at the emojis he could send. He didn’t want to send a black heart because that meant something else. After a while, he decided on a cloud with a lightning strike coming out of it. And then he stared at that because wouldn’t it be bad to send it now?

Arden was having a good time.

But no, Arden had just told him he cared about authenticity and not happiness, or at least, not like that.

Eventually, Efnisien sent the emoji. Arden’s phone buzzed, he looked at the text message, and then looked up with a smile on his face.

‘Do you want to talk about it now?’ Arden said.

Efnisien shook his head, looking sidelong at Kadek, who chose that moment to start clearing plates. Arden went to help him, and Kadek waved him down with familiarity, almost like it was a common ritual between them.

Arden got up and sat next to Efnisien. Before, he’d been sitting on the opposite side of the table, in a way that made Efnisien think maybe Arden was used to that being his spot. Now he was close. Arden reached out and picked at some of the chicken in the gulai with his fingers. He licked them clean, and Efnisien realised he was watching really closely and ducked his head. Arden’s tongue was wet and reddish-pink and it looked like a tongue but…he’d had that on his back, and his neck, and he felt warm just thinking about it.

Eventually he texted: _I just feel like other people deserve to have fun like this more._

Arden looked down at his phone and nodded slowly. ‘Is that something you could talk to Dr Gary about?’ he said.

‘I mean I talk to him about it all the time,’ Efnisien said, sighing. ‘It’s not a new subject.’

‘Right,’ Arden said. ‘So there’s not much I can say that Dr Gary probably hasn’t already said. What do you think would help you, at a moment like this? I think you deserve to have a good time. I think you deserve comfort when you’re having a bad day.’

‘And not to hide your subdrop from your dom,’ Kadek called from the kitchen.

Efnisien’s eyes widened. He looked over, but Kadek was concentrating on spooning food into large bowls.

‘Kadek,’ Arden said chidingly.

‘Sorry, it’s just- I mean it’s not a great habit to get into,’ Kadek said. He looked over to Efnisien. ‘Maybe think of it this way, what do you do when you get sick?’

‘Wait until it gets better,’ Efnisien said, looking between them both in confusion.

Kadek frowned. _‘And_ see a doctor.’

‘You don’t need doctors for things like that,’ Efnisien said. ‘Why? Do you go see doctors when you’re sick?’

Kadek stared at him for a long time, and then his eyebrows rose slowly, and he looked at Arden instead. His expression seemed to say: _Good luck with that._ Unexpectedly, Efnisien felt angry, and he didn’t want to be rude after he’d been fed really nice food and given a _rice cooker._ So his arms pulled into his torso and he stared down at the table, his lips pressed together.

‘There’s nothing wrong with what I’m saying,’ he said finally.

Arden’s hand came and rested on his shoulder, in that way that definitely meant: _There’s something wrong with what you’re saying and I’m going to be nice to you about it._

‘What…reasons would make you go to a doctor?’ Arden said.

‘Um.’ Efnisien shrugged and looked at him. ‘Well. When I needed surgery, um, three years ago.’

‘Oh god,’ Arden said, staring blankly at his phone. ‘And when I pressured you to see a doctor when you got jumped. You weren’t just…being stubborn, were you?’

‘Dr Gary pressured me too.’

‘When did your aunt take you to the doctor?’ Arden said.

‘Never,’ Efnisien said. ‘I had some vaccinations at school, and I don’t remember ever going to a doctor. For anything. You only need to go to doctors if you’re like, really weak or don’t really understand how to look after yourself. Like if you’re not strong. Or maybe if you need time off work because you need that ah- I think it’s a doctor’s certificate?’

Arden’s hand slid from Efnisien’s shoulder down his back, where it rested over his ribs.

‘Do you want to stop talking about this?’ Arden said. ‘You don’t have to talk about this now. We can talk about it later.’

‘Yeah,’ Kadek said. ‘Sorry. I didn’t realise it was so complicated.’

Efnisien wanted to be mad at Kadek for interjecting, but it wasn’t like Efnisien and Arden had been whispering, and he wasn’t mad at Kadek anymore, anyway. He rubbed a hand over his forehead and shrugged. He felt kind of cornered. Like a Dr Gary session, but worse, because these guys didn’t have to follow any rules and could be as pointed and rude as they wanted to be. He half-expected them to start laughing at him for not understanding something he was clearly supposed to understanding.

‘Sorry,’ Arden said. ‘I’m sorry. Hey, Kadek, can we go for a walk around your house or something?’

‘I have literally said a million times that you’re meant to use this place as your own. Go for it.’

Arden stood and held out his hand, and after a moment, Efnisien took it. Arden’s fingers curled gently over his, and then led him down the corridor back towards the front door. They ended up walking down into the first sunken lounge, with all the really nice black leather furniture. The room smelled familiar, like Kadek or his cleaner – surely he had a cleaner – used the same cleaning stuff in here that the servants had used back home.

Arden let Efnisien’s hand go, and Efnisien found himself wandering towards the cabinets. He expected expensive vases and ornaments, but instead there were large plastic figurines that looked well-made, from television shows he’d never seen. It was kind of jarring. If this was a house that belonged to one of this parent’s friends, it would’ve been filled with plates or collectible ceramics or glass or something.

He liked the figurines more.

‘Sweetheart,’ Arden said quietly, perching on an armrest in a way that would’ve gotten him shot on sight at Crielle’s. ‘Do you have any kind of idea what helps when you feel like this?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘And I don’t feel that bad, I just thought- Because it was like what I was thinking before… I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have sent the-’

‘I’m really glad you did!’ Arden interjected. ‘I’m sorry about before. Kadek’s family to me, and it’s easy for me to have kink conversations around him. He has no sense of like…whether he should be bringing that up around you or not, he’ll just bring it up. And subdrop is part of kink, so he brought that up too. He doesn’t mean to be rude, but he can be a lot.’

‘It’s not that,’ Efnisien said. ‘I kind of like that he just talks about stuff. I mean sometimes I’m someone who just talks about stuff.’

‘You can be,’ Arden said, smiling gently. ‘I like when you do that.’

Efnisien wanted to smile back, but he couldn’t make himself. And the next time he looked over, Arden was staring at his belly. Efnisien’s hands had drifted over it protectively. He dropped his hands again, fingers twitching nervously.

‘You don’t have to stop,’ Arden said.

‘I just- It’s just… It’s so stupid. But it hurts sometimes. And I just- It just feels better to have my hands there.’

‘Then put them back,’ Arden said.

‘But it’s stupid, because now you know why,’ Efnisien said, shoving his hands into his pockets.

‘Are your…? Are your digestive issues because of food intolerances? Or because of what she did to you?’

‘I don’t fucking know,’ Efnisien said, feeling exhausted. ‘I don’t know. Dr Gary has mentioned somatic…somatisation stuff a few times. The specialists said the whole area is fucked up and pain is normal. They said digestion issues were normal.’

‘When you go back for follow ups, do you-’ Arden frowned and then tilted his head and stared at a giant fern in the corner. Then he looked back at Efnisien. ‘Wait, _do_ you go back for follow ups?’

‘Nope,’ Efnisien said.

‘ _Should_ you? Were you given the all-clear?’

Efnisien wandered over to the piano and looked at some of the music resting on top of it. Some of it looked like it was for television shows or animations. Some of it was classical. Some of it he knew. He was surprised to see a Max Richter book, and images of sheet music floated up in his mind, arranging themselves together, and his fingers moved absently in the pockets of his jeans until he had to take his hands out.

He raised the fallboard and let it rest gently against the piano, then ran his fingers silently along the keys.

‘They said I should come back once a year if my symptoms changed,’ he said absently. ‘But they’ve always been bad.’

‘Did you tell them how bad the symptoms were?’

‘I mean, they’re not that bad,’ Efnisien said, sorting through sheet music in his head. He liked Max Richter. Crielle hadn’t liked him as much, and she hadn’t loved his _The Blue Notebooks_ album, but she’d tolerated Efnisien playing Richter in the house. ‘But yeah, they know. Because Hillview sent them with a list of all the symptoms I’d ended up in their infirmary over. And I didn’t understand at the time how…normal the pain was. Like, I used to panic over the cramps, and over…everything, until I realised it was normal. Sometimes I thought I was dying again.’

_Sometimes I still do._

He hooked out the piano stool with his foot and then hesitated. He turned to Arden. ‘Is this like…a show piano? Should I stop touching it?’

‘You can do whatever you want,’ Arden said, bemused. ‘Kadek’s philosophy is very much ‘what’s mine is yours.’ I’ve seen a few different people bash around at that piano over the years, so you can as well.’

‘She’s too nice to bash around,’ Efnisien said, sitting on the piano stool and shifting it back a bit further, placing his foot down on the sustain pedal a few times. He realised that even his leg muscles were weaker than they used to be, just from how the arch of his foot and his calf felt pressing it.

He definitely didn’t deserve to sit at a piano this nice, and yet, he wished Dr Gary could see him here. He felt like himself when he sat in front of a piano. He didn’t know how to explain it. Even the twinging, grinding pain in his gut faded a little once he sat.

Absently, his fingers found favourite chords, and he pressed keys down without making a sound. E flat major nine. E minor nine. F major seven. F sharp minor eleven.

But the first notes he played aloud were a C major chord. The notes were perfectly in tune. His fingers knew exactly what to do, even though one of his hands was sore from the ropes. He thought he’d feel nervous, but he’d played for Crielle since he was very young, and he’d learned how not to feel scared around her, which meant he didn’t feel scared when he sat at a piano anymore. Even when she was disappointed in what he was playing, or mad, he’d simply change the song to something she wanted. He could feel the fear later.

The first Max Richter song he played was ‘Written on the Sky,’ because it was simple, because it wasn’t as moody nor as depressing as the Max Richter song he really wanted to play. It took less than two minutes, and his fingers found nearly all the right notes. He slipped off one key in a chord so that it sounded less complete, and he accidentally pressed an A instead of an F at one point, but it didn’t sound as atonal as it could have.

When he finished, his fingers rested on the keys and he looked at Arden. He was surprised by the fixed expression on Arden’s face, the bright look in his eyes.

‘Play another,’ Arden said. To Efnisien’s surprise, he was using what Efnisien had started to think of as his dom voice. Firm, demanding.

So Efnisien played ‘A Catalogue of Afternoons,’ and then he played ‘Vladimir’s Blues,’ which had been one of his favourites when he’d been younger. It was so short, but he loved how it felt. There were far more challenging songs out there to play, and he liked the difficulty of complex piano music, but he also liked music he could close his eyes and zone out to. The songs he could play over and over again until they took residence in his chest somewhere, each key printed into his muscles and nerves until he’d never forget it.

When he stopped playing, several more songs later, he looked over to Kadek, who had also joined them. Efnisien had heard him enter, and decided to say nothing. It reminded him strangely of when Gwyn would sometimes come and watch him play. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes Gwyn would come and sit in the formal lounge where the grand was, when Efnisien felt like playing for hours and didn’t want to do or say anything else. And Gwyn would sit there in a chair and listen, and then he’d always be gone by the time Efnisien was finished.

Probably because he didn’t want to be tortured. Which…fair.

‘Right,’ Kadek said, smiling weakly. ‘So _that’s_ how it’s meant to be played.’

‘Richter’s meant to play it,’ Efnisien said. ‘If you like him, you’ll probably like Einaudi.’

‘I do,’ Kadek said. ‘But I keep buying the sheet music and never giving it enough of my time, so I’ve told myself to stop buying sheet music.’

‘Did you play professionally?’ Arden said to Efnisien.

‘No,’ Efnisien said, closing the fallboard carefully. ‘And Richter’s not challenging.’

Arden’s expression was weird. Kind of like a smile, and wonder, and something else. Crielle had three reactions. Sometimes she’d have her eyes closed with a smile on her face, and Efnisien thought she looked perfect in those moments. In the past, that was the Crielle he wanted to crawl inside of, the one he wanted to defile and immortalise, the version of her that he loved best. And sometimes she’d be frowning at him because she was unimpressed with the song he’d chosen for her or the way he’d played. And sometimes she’d be on her laptop, or phone, and he was just background music, and he didn’t mind that either. He liked making her happy. He liked being background music to her melody.

He missed her so abruptly that pain knifed back into him. He inhaled sharply, hiding it by forcing himself to stand and pushing the stool back in.

‘Thanks for um…’ He gestured to the piano and looked at Kadek. ‘It’s been like…three years. Four, probably.’

‘You haven’t played in _three years?’_ Kadek said.

‘Uh- I picked easy songs,’ Efnisien said. ‘Can you both…? Can you both stop looking at me like that? It’s just piano. Lots of people can play it. It’s not a big deal.’

‘Okay,’ Kadek said. He turned decisively to Arden. ‘Hey, did you know your boyfriend has like four million issues?’

‘I did, thanks!’ Arden said brightly.

‘Fuck you both,’ Efnisien muttered. His ears were turning red, half because of Kadek’s habit of just…teasing, and half because Kadek had easily called him Arden’s boyfriend and he didn’t know what the feeling was in his body, but it was warm and nice.

‘Like _four million,’_ Kadek said, turning back to Efnisien and grinning in a way that indicated he wasn’t seriously teasing. ‘My god. I thought I was bad. And then I met Arden and I thought _he_ was bad.’

‘I have a lot of issues,’ Arden said, smiling.

‘Like I don’t know, maybe one or two million. At most two point five, I think.’

‘Yeah, maybe a conservative two point five,’ Arden said, smile broadening.

‘But you,’ Kadek said, turning back to Efnisien. ‘Like four. _Four_ million.’

And then it didn’t feel like being singled out in quite the same way, and Efnisien didn’t know why. So he shrugged and put his hands back in his pockets, and Arden smiled at him with a fondness that seemed misplaced.

‘Hey,’ Kadek said. ‘Who wants dessert?’

‘Oh my god,’ Efnisien said, staring at him in horror.

‘Me!’ Arden chirped. ‘Me! I do!’

Arden bounced up and had vanished down the corridor back towards the kitchen, and Efnisien heard the distinct sound of a fridge being opened.

‘Wow, he just shot out of here, huh?’ Efnisien said, staring at the doorway Arden had just about skipped through.

‘Dude is weak for dessert,’ Kadek said, smiling warmly. ‘If you’re too full, I’ll pack some up for you to take home. Hey, by the way…’ He walked a bit closer to Efnisien, without coming too close. ‘You ever want to chat, or talk about any issues you’re having, or just need…another party to talk to, you can always contact me, okay? Arden said you don’t know that many people, and don’t know anyone in the scene except for him, but sometimes it can help to have a network of people.’

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said. ‘Um.’

‘Is this _tiramisu?’_ Arden shouted in excitement. And then more kitchen sounds, like Arden was definitely taking it out of the fridge and getting cutlery and everything else already.

 _Wow, listen to that little dude go,_ Efnisien thought absently.

‘The caffeine will calm him down a little,’ Kadek said. ‘And seriously. I know I tease, I know I’m blunt, but any friend of Arden’s is a friend of mine. I’ve got your back, okay?’

Efnisien nodded nervously, and Kadek nodded.

‘Okay, let’s save my tiramisu from the hyperactive bastard boy who’s probably going to eat it with his bare hands if we don’t get there in time,’ Kadek said, loudly enough that his voice carried.

‘It’s mine!’ Arden shouted. ‘I’ll fight you for it. I’ll judo you for it!’

‘Well now, that’s just not playing fair,’ Kadek muttered, walking down his corridor back towards Arden.

Efnisien cast one last longing look at the piano, and followed.


	47. Interrogation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last week was A Time and this week is continuing that theme, but in good news the fires are out!

Efnisien woke on Wednesday morning to a call from Dr Gary.

‘Sorry to bother you, Efnisien, but Dr Mika’s had an opening in his schedule and can see you tomorrow. I was wondering if that was workable with you? Otherwise we can push back and you can have more notice before seeing him.’

‘Um,’ Efnisien said, still half-asleep and realising that it was eight in the morning and Dr Gary started his workday early. He clearly wasn’t doing a classic 9-5 at any rate. ‘Sure.’

He thought about all the things that had happened over the past few days, including his scene with Arden, and then having to pull back, and everything to do with BDSM and subdrop and deserving and thought that yeah, actually, seeing Mika sooner rather than later might be a good idea.

Dr Gary checked that he was sure, and then that was that. Efnisien was seeing Dr Mika the next day.

He had a few minutes where he sat there, heart racing, and then forced himself to get up and get to work.

*

Efnisien’s stomach reacted surprisingly well to the food he’d tried at Kadek’s. He’d had some bad cramps the night before, but once he’d slept, everything had settled down. It was pretty nice to not have to spend most of the night and a huge chunk of the morning rushing back and forth to the toilet, moments like this were rare.

He did some audio transcription, and when his phone rang again, he answered it automatically, thinking it was Dr Gary again.

‘Hello, Efnisien speaking,’ he said.

‘Hey, twink.’ A rough voice, deeper than he expected, and he stared blankly ahead because that was _Bridge._

‘Um,’ he said.

_How the fuck did you get my number?_

Already he felt afraid, which was so annoying, so stupid. He waited for her to tell him that she didn’t want him to come back to the choir. He felt like he shouldn’t say anything at all. She didn’t want him to talk to her. So…

So then why…?

‘You coming to rehearsal tonight?’ she said.

‘Uh, n-no. I wasn’t… I wasn’t planning on it.’

‘Thought so. Look, I think we should talk.’ Her voice was brusque, he hated not being able to see her expression, her body language.

‘It’s- That’s- If you want to tell me not to come back, you… you c-can just tell me and I won’t come back. It’s okay. I’m not mad.’

‘Why? You hate choir so much?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘But- Is that why you called? To tell me not to come back?’

_Please tell me what you want._

‘No, I said I think we should talk, and I meant it. What are you doing for lunch today? Can we meet somewhere public?’

‘Sure. Yeah. Um. Yeah.’

Efnisien was still reeling at the fact that Bridge had his number. He’d put his phone number down on the sign-up sheet, and it was pretty obvious that was how she’d gotten it. Did she speak to Teddy? Or someone else? Was that allowed?

Hearing her voice made him feel like a monster by default, made him want to give up on therapy, Dr Gary, and Arden, and stay in his little apartment until he grew old and died.

Instead, he said: ‘Where? I need- I can’t drive or… I could catch an Uber or something.’

‘Do you know Roscoe’s? Burger place on the corner of Orris and Edgewater.’

‘Um, well… I know Edgewater, so I- I can get there.’

‘Good. Meet me there at lunch. I’m gonna give you my phone number in case you get lost, okay?’

‘I- Yes, okay.’

Efnisien dutifully took down her number, and then she hung up. Efnisien’s gut was already cramping. He laughed weakly at his own stupid body as he sagged down on the couch by his books. God. He wasn’t going to be able to walk there, it was too close to Arden’s bookstore and he still wasn’t able to face it. Still too scared of being beaten to death. He’d have to get an Uber.

He hoped he didn’t get a driver who wanted to talk the whole way.

The intrusive thoughts piled in soon after, with such a classic sense of timing that he was beginning to think he should expect them when he was really afraid. He saw Berdella hunting his victims, charmingly coaxing them into his life and then his home, and Efnisien lay there with his hands over his face, palms muffling his loud, panicked breathing.

He put tallies on the board on the way out.

*

Bridge was already waiting for him when he arrived at Roscoe’s. He didn’t know how he felt seeing her again. Relieved? Happy? Terrified? Upset? And worried, too. Worried about her, worried about what she was going to do to him. He sat down opposite her and put his satchel on the wooden, scratched floorboards. He’d remembered the satchel for once. He had a bottle of water already, which was probably good, because his mouth was dry as fuck.

He unstuck his tongue with some effort and then looked down, away from her piercing gaze.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Neither do I. But here, look, let me kind of say my piece, and then you can decide if you have anything to say as well, all right?’

Efnisien nodded.

‘You want anything to eat?’ she asked.

He shook his head. Food was a distant dream at this point. He hated burgers anyway, these days. He used to like them, but his entire digestive system wanted nothing to do with them anymore. The cheese and the fat in the patty ruined him, and they were big and hard to eat, and they hurt.

‘I’m gonna get something,’ she said.

‘Okay.’

So she went off and ordered, and Efnisien forcibly tried to calm his breathing down. Out of the two of them, she was the one who had been hurt by an ex, and he was the one who hurt people. It didn’t make sense that he was reacting this way. The worst she could do was tell him to his face never to go back to the choir, and he was kind of expecting it anyway.

_She could really hurt you, and you’d let her._

He winced. He imagined it. Her taking him down some alley and telling him to stand still while she punched him out. He’d let her.

He’d let her.

He missed Crielle so badly.

He burrowed his shaking hands between his legs and stared fixedly out of the window, jolting when she returned a short time later, holding a table number in her hands. She set it down and moved it so that it was facing the kitchen.

‘You raped anyone?’ she said bluntly.

‘No,’ Efnisien said, feeling airless, like he had to fight to find his voice. He reached down and opened his satchel, bringing out his bottle of water. He sipped gingerly. She was staring at him like a laser and he didn’t want to play twenty questions like this. Not when she already knew he’d badly hurt people. ‘Um. I’ve molested women, and I’ve been cruel to animals.’

She recoiled. She literally jerked backwards, and he looked out of the window again.

‘What I don’t get,’ Bridge said finally, after clearing her throat twice, ‘is that you’re not behaving like a total shithole. I didn’t get a _total shithole_ vibe from you when we met. I got victim-vibes, and I’ve met enough of victims to fucking _know._ God knows I am one. But if you’re some sadistic asswipe, I don’t get why – after I told you to stop talking to me – you actually stayed out of my way, and finally stopped coming, like _I’d_ fucking hurt _you.’_

‘Wouldn’t it just be easier if I didn’t come back?’ Efnisien said.

‘I want to understand,’ Bridge said, her voice hard.

A waiter came with a glass of Coke, and Bridge took a long drink before setting the glass back down again.

‘When was the last time you did your shit?’ she said.

‘Three years ago,’ Efnisien said. ‘I went to Hillview around the time I decided I didn’t want to hurt people anymore. I was there for a year, and I’ve been an outpatient ever since. Three years.’

‘And your therapist thinks it’s fine to inflict you on _groups?’_

‘Uh.’ Efnisien almost laughed and had to work to hold it back. ‘Actually, um, I asked him the same thing.’

‘So you weren’t pushing to join them?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘I hate groups. I mean- Sorry. I just…don’t socialise well.’

‘Why aren’t you in jail?’ she said.

Efnisien wanted to shrug, but she deserved proper answers. Even if it did feel like he had a solid grip on the shovel that he was digging a hole for himself with. Would she go back and tell everyone? Maybe. What would Dr Gary do then? Probably tell him it was a learning experience.

‘My aunt – um, she was like my mother – was rich. I came from a rich family. They made a lot of things disappear. I tried not to attack anyone more than once, most of the time, and they- There are like…corrupt cops in the city. And my family know some of them.’

‘And who abused you?’ she said.

Efnisien’s eyes flew to hers in shock, and then he had to look away again. ‘Does it matter? Doesn’t make any of it okay.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But someone did, right?’

‘A few people,’ Efnisien said quietly. No, _maybe_ they did, Dr Gary thought they did, but they didn’t really. Crielle loved him, and Lludd was just…annoyed at him for really understandable reasons. It wasn’t anything like what Gwyn had to go through. And everything that happened at Hillview didn’t count. None of that counted. Because it all happened _after._

‘And that’s why you did what you did? What, you were paying it forward in the most fucked up way possible?’ she said.

Her interrogatory tone was getting to him. He thought she’d make a pretty good cop, actually. Reflexively, he said:

‘I did it because my aunt told me to, and because I learned to like it.’

Words that he still struggled to wrap his head around. Words that floated around in his head, that looked like the truth, but felt awful to think about.

Bridge was silent for so long that Efnisien knew he should look at her to see the expression on her face. But it wasn’t worth it. He didn’t want to see the shock. He didn’t want to see the expression that he’d now seen on Arden’s face, and Dr Gary’s, and even Kadek’s. He rubbed at his forehead with the heel of his hand and drank some more water. Outside, people in business suits were walking by. And some teenagers who looked like they were wagging school, having a good time.

‘Yeah right, she told you to,’ Bridge said sceptically. ‘What the fuck? No one does shit like that.’

‘I know, right?’ Efnisien said. He smiled bitterly. Maybe she’d just get really angry and tell him not to return, and then tell everyone what he’d done. And then they’d all do what the people on Reddit and Twitter did, and tell him that he deserved to be tortured and then die. And he’d agree with them. It’d be a nice little circle jerk of all of them being in accordance with each other.

He was going to miss choir.

‘She told you to,’ she said again, her voice flat. ‘What, did she teach you that women were trash? So you decided to hurt them? Was that it?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, frowning. ‘She- Uh. I don’t think you want to know this story.’

‘ _Don’t_ fucking tell me what I want to know and what I don’t. I’m trying to understand why you make all my instincts go nuts. I want to know so I don’t fall into this again, and my therapist said it wouldn’t hurt to meet you in a public place. Well, she said it _maybe_ wouldn’t hurt. But so far, I’m peachy. So fucking tell me the story, twink.’

‘I have a name,’ he said quietly.

‘Tell me.’

Efnisien sighed. He tried to think of the shortest possible way he could tell the story, the corners he could cut in the process. In the end he managed:

‘When I was five, there was a puppy I wanted to play with, but it was tired. So I pulled its tail. It yelped and I cried, because I didn’t sort of realise it was a real animal with feelings until that point. My aunt came up to me and told me I enjoyed it, and then she told me that I could keep enjoying it, and that she’d show me, and that it’d be our secret, and then she got me animals to hurt. When I got older, she taught me how to go after people. But like, for the sake of honesty, she wanted me to be mean to my cousin too – her son – because she hated him. So like, I was mean to him too from a pretty young age. Because then she’d be nice to me.’

‘Where are your parents in all of this?’

‘On a cruise ship somewhere,’ Efnisien said. His ears were bright red, burning, he could feel them lit up on either side of his face. He felt like he had a fever, but it was just shame and humiliation, because he hated speaking about this shit. ‘They never wanted a kid.’

‘Where’s your aunt now?’

‘She left the country,’ Efnisien said. ‘Three years ago.’

‘Right,’ Bridge said, like she didn’t understand at all. ‘Why would I even believe you? That you haven’t hurt anyone in three years? Seems pretty convenient to me. You could be lying.’

‘I could be,’ Efnisien said, looking at her. That was the easiest one to admit, he did – after all – used to be a huge fucking liar. To everyone, even Crielle. ‘I don’t think you should trust me, and if you don’t want me to come back, I won’t come back. If you want, you can call my therapist and talk to him, but I could be lying to him too.’

She scowled at him. Her burger arrived, and the smell of the food turned his stomach and he stared at the cars beyond the window. He drank water, he told his stomach that it had no reason to cramp or hurt because he hadn’t eaten anything, and he didn’t plan on eating anything for the rest of the day if he could help it.

He was so tired.

‘I don’t want to be the person I used to be anymore,’ Efnisien said to his water bottle. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell everyone at the choir when I first arrived, but my therapist told me to like… ‘honour the person that I am now’ instead of dragging out the past first. I told him that was stupid and wrong and a form of lying. But I tried it his way anyway. It was a mistake.’

‘Everyone else in that group likes you,’ Bridge said, her mouth full as she ate.

‘Except Nate.’

‘Fuckin’ Nate,’ Bridge muttered, and then laughed. ‘He doesn’t like anyone. Except Janusz.’

Efnisien nodded because he’d figured that out for himself.

‘I think you should start coming to rehearsals again,’ Bridge said.

Efnisien heard the opposite at first, nodding in agreement, before her words actually sunk in. He tensed. To his horror, his eyes filled with tears.

‘What?’

‘You ever been sexually abused?’ she said. ‘You know what it feels like?’

He gave up on keeping up with her tangents. He thought of Dr Gary saying that Crielle sexually abused him; something he still disagreed with. He thought of Dr Henton, and Dr Henton’s fucking hands, and that mouth by his ear whispering the truth so far into him that it was never going to come out again, and he nodded wordlessly.

‘Animals though,’ Bridge muttered. ‘Fucking _animals._ God, what do I even say, huh? Always said I’d kill anyone who did shit like that, and you’re making a liar out of me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ she said, and kept eating. ‘Does your boyfriend know?’

Efnisien nodded again, then sniffed because yeah, he was actually fucking crying. It was so pathetic, so annoying. She had a right to ask him all of these goddamn questions. She _did._ Why couldn’t he just be calm about it?

‘Your boyfriend’s a fucking idiot.’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, unable to help himself. ‘He’s- I mean… I- I don’t think he’s- I mean, he’s not naïve, but uh, maybe. Maybe. He’s really smart though.’

She kept eating, but didn’t say anything else, and Efnisien tried to sort out the dissonance of feeling like Arden was an idiot for being with him, and also one of the smartest people he’d ever met. What if Arden was an idiot? What if Efnisien was like a sleeper cell, and he’d just turn around and really hurt Arden one day?

Arden had given him tons of opportunities already.

God, what if that meant Arden really was naïve?

‘Do you think I should break up with him?’ Efnisien said, staring at her plate with its drippings of sauce and bits of lettuce.

‘I mean if you think you’re really not gonna hurt him, then it’s your call. But the fact that he knows and he’s still with you, he’s either a monster, or he’s an idiot.’

Efnisien thought about Laurie. He thought about how Arden had cringed away from him at Kadek’s. It had been about Laurie – that’s what Arden had _said_ – but what if it was because of Efnisien too?

‘Hang on,’ Bridge said, and then she chewed and swallowed. ‘What, you’d break up with him because I told you to?’

‘I don’t want to hurt him,’ Efnisien said. ‘If you think it’s a good idea… I mean you’d know, right? Because of- You’ve been through stuff. So-’

‘You don’t fucking know me at all,’ Bridge said slowly. ‘But if I told you to never see him again, you’d what- Give that due consideration?’

Confused, he shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘What about what _he_ thinks?’

‘Maybe he doesn’t know any better,’ Efnisien said. ‘Maybe I’m too good of a liar and he can’t tell. Or maybe- Maybe he’s too stuck in his own stuff and can’t see out of it. Or maybe-’

‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘And if I told you to stop going to choir, you’d never go back and if I told you to keep coming, what, are you going to come?’

‘…Yes?’ Efnisien said, rubbing at his eyes with his sleeve and gulping. ‘Yeah. Whatever you want.’

‘What do _you_ want?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Efnisien said, looking at her in confusion.

‘What about what you want in all of this? Like what is it? You wanna torture people? Assault them? Come back to choir? What?’

‘Oh, I…’ Efnisien looked around the burger joint searchingly. It was about half-full. He was the only one not eating. None of the food was remotely appealing. He didn’t think he’d ever want to eat a burger ever again. Not after today. ‘I liked choir, but I don’t like going now that you know about me and it stresses you out. So if you want me to come back because you’re like…less stressed about it, or think I’m…less likely to hurt people, then I’ll come back. And if you want me to come back because you think that’s a nice thing to do for me, but you’ll still be super stressed, then I don’t want to come back. And if you’re just…gonna tell everyone and hate my guts, then I don’t want to come back.’

Maybe Dr Gary had spent so long with fuck ups, he had genuinely forgotten that rehabilitation shouldn’t ever include people like him interacting with people like Bridge.

‘Like,’ Efnisien continued. ‘If you just…want me to come back because I’m like a puzzle you want to figure out, then I don’t know if that’s a g-good decision. If you think I won’t hurt people, then… I don’t know. If you think I will, then I shouldn’t come back.’

‘Yeah,’ Bridge said, her voice harsh. ‘I think I want to talk to your therapist actually, about all of this shit.’

‘Um, okay. I can- I’m seeing him tomorrow, and give him a heads up, because otherwise he’ll go on about confidentiality and stuff. If you call him on Friday or after then, he can talk more honestly if I say it’s okay.’

‘And this therapist,’ Bridge said. ‘Does he think you’re a good guy?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘He doesn’t believe in good people or bad people. He believes in good actions and bad actions. He’s a Hillview therapist. He saw me at… He saw me at my worst. He diagnosed me.’

‘Diagnosed you with what? Sociopathy?’

‘I keep trying to get him to do that,’ Efnisien said, his voice as tired as he felt. ‘No, uh, obsessive compulsive disorder, subtype Pure O, and PTSD. And like attendant depression and anxiety and shit. I’m on meds. He goes through all the diagnostic tests again if he feels like it’s necessary, so the PTSD was recent.’

He wrapped an arm around his stomach and shrugged.

‘Look, if you think it will help you, please talk to him. But…’

‘But _what?’_

She was picking at chips now, and Efnisien missed her being nice to him, but she had zero reason to be. But for once he maybe understood why Dr Gary wanted him to focus on introducing his present-self first. But it sure was convenient for him and literally no one else. 

‘B-but maybe just… You can still talk to him and I don’t have to come back,’ Efnisien said. ‘Maybe it will make choir easier. I can always c-call Teddy and tell him a family thing has come up, so that no one’s… I didn’t think anyone would care if I didn’t turn up.’

‘I know I sure don’t want to,’ Bridge said heavily. ‘But something about you… It’s annoying. The first time I met you, my instincts said you were a victim. And one who needed like, protection. And that’s my shit, that’s what I do. Any newbies in the choir who need that, old Bridge steps up and offers it. But then we went out for food that time, and you said that thing about the intrusive thoughts, and hurting people, and something just twigged. It was the weirdest feeling. But I also didn’t expect you to give me an honest answer, or listen to me, because if you’re the kind of person who’s hurt people, I feel like you also shouldn’t be the kind of person to like- All of this…’

She gestured to all of him, and Efnisien nodded like he knew what she was talking about when he had no fucking idea. He’d stopped crying at least. And now he didn’t really want to see Dr Mika anymore, because he didn’t know if he should be with Arden, let alone trying to talk about that relationship beyond discussing whether it should exist at all.

Efnisien texted her Dr Gary’s number, and wondered if Dr Gary would be angry at him for this. But he could check tomorrow. He had no idea what Dr Gary would say. Bridge might not even care, she seemed pretty sure that Efnisien had hoodwinked him.

‘Why aren’t you eating?’ she said. ‘You hardly ate last time. You eat less than a bird.’

‘Stomach stuff,’ Efnisien said.

‘What kind?’

‘God,’ Efnisien said, some exasperation leaking through. ‘My aunt stabbed me, okay? She stabbed me a ton and now my whole digestive system doesn’t work properly.’

‘Cuz you molested her?’

Efnisien stared at Bridge in amazement, and then he disintegrated into hysterical laughter, because the idea of anyone doing that to Crielle was more ridiculous and terrifying than anything that was happening today. When he stopped, he realised people were looking at him, and that he probably sounded weird and way, way too loud.

He pressed his lips together, and stared at a stain on the table.

‘She used to hurt her son by poisoning his food. And my uncle beat him to shit. So my cousin tried to emancipate himself from the family as a teenager. She tasked me with like, stopping him, and I did actually really try. But in the end, I knew he had to leave us for like- His safety, his life. So I went onto her computer and got a whole bunch of files where she’d filmed herself poisoning him and gave it to my cousin, and it was the thing that cracked the case. My family had to pay him millions in like, damages and shit, and he emancipated himself. So she tried to kill me, and then she left the country, and I haven’t heard from her since. I went into Hillview as soon as I came out of the hospital.’

‘I’ve seen less dramatic soap operas,’ Bridge said after a while, her voice muted.

‘Well. My cousin never hurt anyone, so don’t think it lets me off the hook or anything.’

‘I don’t think that,’ Bridge said conversationally. ‘Tell me something, do you believe in that good actions versus bad actions thing? Or do you believe there are good people and bad people?’

‘The latter,’ Efnisien said. ‘And I’m a bad person, and I always will be, no matter how I live. I’ll do my best, but like- Good actions don’t make me a good person.’

‘What would?’

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said, feeling like he could just sink down and fall asleep on the table that the waiters hadn’t cleaned very well. ‘Probably refusing my aunt the first time she coaxed me into hurting an animal.’

‘When you were five,’ she said flatly.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘It’s not like I didn’t know it was wrong then, you know. I still did it.’

‘And you don’t think anything could make you a good person now?’ she said.

‘No,’ Efnisien said. He really… He really needed to sleep. He hadn’t slept that badly overnight, but maybe Kadek’s food was affecting him on some kind of delay because he’d eaten so much.

‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘Well, I think I understand things a bit better, anyway. You coming to rehearsal tonight?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘I’ll wait until you’ve talked to Dr Gary.’

‘Got it,’ she said, pushing up and standing. ‘I’ll be in touch either way. Bye, twink.’

He was starting to hate that nickname, but he nodded blankly, and she walked away. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, but when he next looked up, a waiter was standing by the table asking him if he was going to order anything, and he apologised and got his bottle of water and his satchel and left.

He knew he should organise an Uber back home, but the idea of dealing with one more person was too exhausting to contemplate, so he sank down on a street bench and hugged his satchel to his stomach.

The need to sleep rolled over him instantly. When he woke, it was late afternoon and he was shivering from the drop in temperature. He’d lost a few hours, but no one had taken his satchel, and his stomach wasn’t griping as badly as before.

Disoriented, and still stupidly sleepy, he arranged an Uber and had to force himself to stay awake on the drive home, unable to think of anything other than the fact that he was a bad person, and it wasn’t Arden’s fault that he didn’t see it yet. Maybe he was just really good at lying to people, even when he didn’t mean to. After all, he was a coward, and concealing the truth was the kind of thing cowards did. He just wished he knew what it meant to be strong, at times like this.


	48. Sadness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually wrote the beginning of this chapter three times until I was happy with it. Whoof.

‘I’m just- I’m sorry about cancelling on Dr Mika last minute,’ Efnisien said, within a few seconds of sitting in the seat. ‘It’s- I mean- Maybe another time or, I don’t know, I might break up with Arden, I don’t know.’

Dr Gary looked at him steadily, with an evenness that simultaneously made Efnisien feel settled and like Dr Gary didn’t _understand_ how terrible and evil Efnisien was, and god, what if he’d managed to somehow brainwash his psychologist into thinking that maybe he was an okay person?

He’d spent the night before drafting break up messages to Arden, feeling increasingly miserable the more he thought about it. Finally, close to midnight, he sent Arden a cloud with lightning coming out of it, and they’d texted, but Efnisien couldn’t tell him what had happened. It sounded so stupid. He saw someone who used to be his friend, and didn’t want to be his friend anymore, and hated him. And one day Arden would feel the same way about him. It was only a matter of time.

But one thing Arden said was that if Efnisien felt so miserable, maybe Dr Gary would help, and Efnisien had spent the next six hours – gut cramping, fucking miserable between the toilet and his couch – clutching his phone and agonising over whether he should cancel the session with Dr Mika at such short notice. But Arden was right, Efnisien would do better spending time with Dr Gary, rather than Dr Mika.

At nine in the morning, the day of his session, he called Dr Gary’s office – not his personal mobile number that he was supposed to call in an emergency, because this wasn’t an emergency – and got through to Mack and left a message. Dr Gary called him an hour and ten minutes later, probably after another client, to let him know it was fine, they’d reschedule Dr Mika to another time.

Which made Efnisien feel _worse._

He caught about two hours of sleep at his desk while trying to work to distract himself. He drafted more break up messages to Arden, locked up and breathless as he wrote and discarded them.

He put tallies on the whiteboard because the intrusive thoughts didn’t leave. He almost missed the days when he used to fantasise about hurting people, because he was getting really fucking tired of imagining Berdella, and the alternatives that his brain threw up weren’t helpful. He saw Bridge killing him, which was stupid, it was _stupid,_ because out of the two of them, he was the one who was way more likely to do it.

And worse, memories of Henton bubbled up like lava, melting through the cracks of his sanity until he stood near the toilet, wondering if he was going to throw up, when he hardly ever did that. He felt like he’d cold sweated nearly all of the water he’d drunk, and in the end managed a half-cup of hot water before he walked to Dr Gary’s, feeling light-headed, wide awake and incredibly lethargic and weird at the same time.

Now, he felt like he’d fucked up. He could’ve talked to Dr Mika. He could’ve done that. Dr Gary probably didn’t like to be jerked around like this. Maybe he wanted the break from Efnisien. Maybe everyone did.

‘You don’t look like you’re feeling very well today,’ Dr Gary said finally. ‘Are you sick?’

‘I’m not sick,’ Efnisien said. Then he burst into a short clip of ugly laughter. ‘Except, you know, up here.’ He pointed to his head.

‘How about you catch me up to speed, with regards to what’s been happening in the last week?’

Efnisien nodded, then picked at his jumper, then nodded again.

‘It’s just- I know I shouldn’t have cancelled, and that Dr Mika was doing something really nice by offering to see me early. And that I shouldn’t take- I shouldn’t take that for granted, you know, people being nice to me. So if you could tell him… If you could t-tell him I just- I don’t know. It’s just I don’t know if- I thought he could help me, and then I changed my mind. Which is dumb, right? That’s so fucking stupid.’

‘Efnisien, could you give me a number between one and ten right now?’

‘For intrusive thoughts?’ Efnisien said, frowning. Normally Dr Gary asked him when he was spacing out like crazy.

‘For how you’re feeling. If it helps, you can pretend how you’re feeling at this point is an intrusive thought, and then based on that, you can give me a-’

‘Seven,’ Efnisien said. ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

‘That’s great,’ Dr Gary said smoothly. ‘Could you name five things you can see in this room for me?’

Efnisien did a double take, then squinted at Dr Gary, but his expression hadn’t changed. And Efnisien thought about telling him to get fucked, because he didn’t _need_ to do that, but actually maybe… maybe it would help.

‘Uh.’ Efnisien’s eyes roved around the room. ‘The plant, your laptop, your desk, um, your shoes, and…the floorboards.’

‘That’s very good,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Four things you can hear?’

Efnisien had to try harder for that one, because Dr Gary’s office wasn’t naturally loud, and it muffled the sounds from outside.

‘My breathing,’ Efnisien said, rubbing at his forehead. ‘Your laptop’s humming. Mack’s typing. And… the air coming out of the vent.’

He looked around Dr Gary’s office again. It was all the same as usual. Even Dr Gary’s pens were the same.

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said quietly. ‘One thing I’d like to clear up now. Dr Mika understands cancellations happen. You do not have a pattern of cancelling or disrespecting the schedules of others. He’s not angry with you, nor did he offer to see you _early,_ he had an opening in his schedule, that’s all. One day we can talk about your perception of people doing their jobs as something you perceive as them being nice to you. Dr Mika wasn’t being nice to you, he was doing his job. That’s not a personal favour to you, Efnisien, it’s simply his job.’

Efnisien nodded, and didn’t know why Dr Gary was making such a point of it. He also had no idea why it made him feel a little relieved.

‘Can you let me know what’s been happening this week?’ Dr Gary said, and Efnisien shifted in the seat, and then drew one of his legs up.

He talked about Sunday with Arden, though not too much, because it hadn’t been bad, and he didn’t want to share details with Dr Gary because that was the kind of thing he wanted to talk to Dr Mika about. He talked about Kadek’s house, the rice cooker, playing piano, the argument with Arden, and the decision to use an emoji signalling system, at which point Dr Gary asked if he could make a note on the computer.

And then Efnisien brought up the meeting with Bridge, and Dr Gary didn’t look as relaxed anymore, and continued to look the same amount of not-quite-relaxed that meant he was super unhappy for the rest of it. Efnisien had to stop looking at him, and focused on relating the conversation as he remembered it.

Thanks to Crielle, he was pretty good at remembering conversations word for word. After all, she hated repeating herself, and she was very good at quoting his stupidity back to him, so he learned to memorise the things that were being said around him, the dumb shit he was saying back.

‘So, like, now I just don’t know if I should be with Arden,’ Efnisien said. ‘And then I thought of all the reasons I wanted to see Dr Mika in the first place, to talk to him about…the stuff I do with Arden and if I deserve that. All of it seems kind of redundant if I’m going to break up with Arden. Or if I’m going to- Like, you see? It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see Dr Mika, I didn’t want to waste his time.’

_I don’t want to waste yours either._

‘I’m going to make some notes, if you don’t mind,’ Dr Gary said, pulling his laptop forwards and shifting to face it in his chair. Efnisien stared, because normally Dr Gary straight up asked, and this time he just said he was going to do it. And then he was typing, and he was typing _a lot._

‘Hey,’ Efnisien said nervously. ‘I’m not any crazier today than normal, right?’

Dr Gary shook his head, but he didn’t respond, like he’d half-tuned Efnisien out while he typed. Which also meant it was probably more important than his regular notes.

Efnisien sunk down in the chair and wished his head could vanish into his shoulders. Life would be great if he was a fucking turtle.

Eventually, Dr Gary stopped writing, and he turned back to face Efnisien and crossed his ankle over his other knee and drummed his fingers on the armrest. Efnisien had no idea what that meant, only that Dr Gary was thinking about something, and Efnisien probably wasn’t going to like whatever it was once he started talking.

God, what if-?

‘Wait,’ Efnisien said. ‘Do _you_ think I need to b-break up with Arden? Is that it?’

‘No,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I think it’s worth noting that you’ve had a strong post-trauma response to your meeting with Bridge. It’s safe to say either the encounter itself was traumatising, or it hooked into past trauma that you’ve experienced.’

‘What? No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t _traumatising.’_

‘Efnisien, people don’t normally fall asleep in broad daylight, on park benches, when they have homes to go to or don’t have a diagnosis like narcolepsy. While you were fortunate no one took your satchel, someone easily could have robbed you of your possessions. Everything from your increased intrusive thoughts, to your agitation and fearfulness today, can be attributed to that encounter.’

‘You- No- You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Efnisien said. ‘She thinks you’re a quack anyway!’

‘Someone who you thought of as a friend, or at the very least, a person who was trustworthy, treated you very poorly.’

‘Out of the two of us, me and her, who’s the victim? She is! Not me!’

‘That’s incorrect,’ Dr Gary said calmly. ‘She has never been _your_ victim, but you have now been _hers_. The invasion of your privacy, the demand to further invade your personal life to validate your experiences – thereby gaslighting you into believing that your own words don’t matter – and her ignorance of your boundaries hallmark a deeply unpleasant encounter that you’re right to feel upset over. While her actions are understandable because she has – as you have said – been a victim, they are not excusable. You’re many things, Efnisien, and while you find it incredibly easy to call yourself a criminal or someone who is evil or bad, you are a victim.’

‘No, you-’

‘You are a _victim,’_ Dr Gary said firmly.

Efnisien’s mouth snapped shut, and Dr Gary sighed.

‘I apologise for interrupting you,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I know I said I’d try not to do that in sessions with you. I’ll try not to do it again.’

Efnisien sat there stunned at the apology. He’d kind of forgotten that they’d agreed to that. But they had. Because Efnisien used to hate it so much.

‘You say it’s gaslightning,’ Efnisien said warily. ‘But why _should_ she believe me?’

‘Do you remember when we talked about Gwyn, we talked about how he was trying to have it both ways? He was trying to treat you as though you had the capacity to recover, but was also treating you like a criminal who didn’t? Therefore, he could treat you poorly, while feeling like he was somehow doing you a large favour simply by visiting you? I’m not sure if Bridge is in this arena, but there’s elements that are similar. It’s not fair to you that she thinks you’re so much of a criminal that you can’t be trusted in one breath, but then tells you to come back to choir in the next.’

‘So I should just not go back,’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t _want_ to go back. And what about Arden? God- Like I know we might end up breaking up. It’s become really fucking obvious that if we break up it’s going to be solely because I’m such a fuck up. Like, even… When we were at Kadek’s… But like, should I just pre-empt it now? Bridge sounded like she knew what she was talking about, what if Arden isn’t seeing something she sees?’

‘What can she see that’s more valuable than what Arden sees?’ Dr Gary asked.

Efnisien was stumped by that question. He initially wanted to say it was because Arden wasn’t a victim like she was, but…that wasn’t true.

‘It might be worth considering why you give her words so much power over your life,’ Dr Gary said quietly.

Efnisien’s fingers paused where they had been repeatedly digging into the armrests. He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, she doesn’t know you as well as Arden does. She doesn’t know you as well as I do. And you don’t know her at all.’

‘I know she’s _good,’_ Efnisien said.

‘You don’t know that,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Because if we accept that you are a victim, and someone who has done terrible things. Then we must also accept that Bridge is a victim and _might_ also be someone capable of terrible things. Even if- No, let me finish please, Efnisien. Even if she’s never done a single terrible thing before your meeting – which is possible – she still treated you _terribly._ ’

‘But she’s not like me.’

‘I’m not saying she’s like you. I’m saying that she’s not a good, pure person who’s beyond judgement, whose opinion of you should be held above all others. Especially if that opinion threatens your progress, your rehabilitation, and your recovery, and is _incorrect_.’

Efnisien’s head hurt. He bent forwards, fingers digging into his head. Eventually he tugged at his hair a few times and stared at his thighs.

‘You’re being mean,’ Efnisien said finally.

‘Why do you think I’m being mean?’

‘Even _that’s_ fucking mean.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh my god,’ Efnisien snapped, standing, wanting to kick the chair. Instead he walked towards the books on the back wall, the furthest away from Dr Gary that it was possible to be. He didn’t want to look at Dr Gary. He didn’t want to imagine hurting him. But instead, he kept imagining Dr Gary getting mad at him. He’d stand up and walk over and tell him that he had no right to be mad, and that he was a waste of time and space, and then it would be just like the sessions with- Then it would be like…

‘Why do you think I’m being mean, Efnisien?’ Dr Gary said.

‘ _Shut up!’_ Efnisien shouted, then stared around the room shakily. It was nothing like the room in Hillview. Nothing at all. The side of his arm was pressed up against the books, and he could feel the way his hands were tense, would tremble soon. He shoved them into his pockets. ‘Why do you say the opposite of what Henton said? Does that work? Do you even get results? Do _any_ of your patients stop hurting people at all?’

Dr Gary stilled. He made a point of moving the leg that crossed his other leg back down to the floor.

‘You have stopped hurting people,’ Dr Gary said.

‘Maybe I haven’t though,’ Efnisien said. ‘How would you even _know?_ I could be lying to you! You don’t know. I could be doing the worst shit. Maybe I’m just a really good liar.’

‘That’s true,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I choose to trust you.’

‘Because you’re _stupid,’_ Efnisien said, laughing, his voice cracking into a higher register. ‘Because you’re so fucking _stupid._ How are you _so_ \- How are you not dead yet? How has one of your patients not tried to kill you yet?’

Dr Gary stayed calm. And Efnisien felt like he was a pot on a stove set to boil, and no one was coming to turn the heat down, so he was just going to go off until he caught fire or something. That stupid exercise they’d done earlier hadn’t helped at all. Dr Gary didn’t seem to even want him to calm down.

And then Dr Gary said: ‘What did Henton say, that was the opposite of what I said?’

Efnisien felt the question like a blow to his gut. He leaned against the bookshelf. He felt betrayed. They were never meant to talk about Henton.

But Efnisien also wasn’t meant to bring him up.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Efnisien said.

‘It does,’ Dr Gary said. ‘He had authority and power over you, and you have a habit of giving an unusual amount of weight to the words of people who have authority over you. Especially if they abuse that power.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I see you now,’ Efnisien said.

‘Since you seem to believe that people like Henton are more correct in their assessment of you, than people like me, do you think you should be seeing someone like Henton instead?’

Efnisien grabbed a book before Dr Gary had even finished speaking, then threw it across the room with as much force as he could muster. He aimed for the corner opposite to Dr Gary and the plant, but it was a hardback, and it landed with a loud, heavy bang.

‘Do you need me to repeat the question?’ Dr Gary said.

‘You’re being mean,’ Efnisien rasped. ‘You have a whole lot of books here.’

‘I would appreciate it if you didn’t keep damaging my property. If you don’t want to answer a question, you can tell me like the adult you are.’

After everything the day before, and everything at Kadek’s, Efnisien felt like he was being sucked down a drain.

‘What did Henton say to you, Efnisien?’ Dr Gary said, and even though his voice was less stern than before, it was still a shitty question to ask. Efnisien couldn’t imagine himself ever sitting in that chair, close to Dr Gary, ever again. He didn’t want to be anywhere near any psychologist at all. None of them could be trusted. Not a single one.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘But you’re giving his words significant weight,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Do you think you should be seeing someone like Henton instead?’

Efnisien’s face screwed up. ‘I don’t know. Maybe! Just because I hate it doesn’t mean he’s not right! It’s the same with Bridge, isn’t it? Just because I hate hearing it, doesn’t mean they aren’t telling me the truth!’

‘And what’s the truth, Efnisien?’

Efnisien shook his head rapidly in response. Dr Gary eased forwards on his chair, leaning closer, his gaze intent.

‘What do you think the truth is, Efnisien?’

‘You’re being an asshole,’ Efnisien said, feeling like he couldn’t get enough breath. ‘You _know_ you are.’

‘Why is that such a problem?’

‘I don’t like it,’ Efnisien said, and then he had to say it again because he ran out of air on the second word. ‘I don’t _like_ it.’

‘You said yourself that just because you hate it, or don’t like it, doesn’t mean it’s not right. So should I listen to you when you don’t like something?’

‘You-’ Efnisien’s head hurt, he sagged back against the spines of the hardcovers. He knew Dr Gary was trying to get at something and he didn’t understand why he couldn’t _get_ it. Normally he understood this stuff, even if he didn’t believe it. But he was really fucking confused. ‘No, you… You shouldn’t listen?’

‘No?’ Dr Gary said gently. ‘I shouldn’t listen to you when you don’t like something?’

‘I didn’t listen to anyone else when they didn’t like what I did,’ Efnisien said. ‘So… No one should listen to me.’

‘The main reason you began hurting people and animals, was because someone wasn’t listening to you, even though you made it clear you didn’t like hurting people and animals.’

‘That’s- I _never_ …’ Efnisien ground his teeth together. No, that wasn’t right. He was evil, and Crielle found out, and then they had a secret and it was special and it belonged to them. ‘She loved me. And she knew better than me, about everything!’

‘Just like Bridge,’ Dr Gary said.

_‘Yes!’_

‘And like Dr Henton?’

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said, wanting to gag and swallowing the instinct and his saliva down. ‘I don’t know. Yeah. Probably.’

‘Do you want to sit down?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘Oh my god, _fuck_ you,’ Efnisien said, outraged, staring at him. He didn’t want to sit near Dr Gary _ever._ But Dr Gary didn’t seem upset – business as fucking usual – and simply leaned back in his chair and contemplated Efnisien.

‘I don’t think I realised how your patterns of interaction change depending on who you interact with,’ Dr Gary said, ‘because you’ve always felt at least comfortable enough with me to say when you don’t like something. But it wasn’t always like that in the beginning, you either hated everything I said, or accepted everything I said, and there was very little middle ground until you learned that I was trustworthy. I think – with Bridge – we can see a pattern of behaviour whereby you give an unusual amount of weight to the words of people who are hurting you. Perhaps, specifically, _because_ they are hurting you. Not because you don’t like it and want them to stop, but because you believe their actions are more valid once they begin to hurt you.’

Efnisien had nothing to say. None of it sounded wrong, and none of it sounded like anything he wanted to disagree with.

‘Efnisien, what did Henton say to you?’ Dr Gary prompted.

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said, his voice breaking. ‘He said a lot of stuff. Too much stuff to say right now. He said lots of things.’

‘Could you say some of them? Even one of those things?’

‘It doesn’t matter, does it? He just said that I was never gonna change. That’s all. That I c-can’t change, and that I should be in jail, and that anyone who ever gets to know the real me will see… they’ll see that I’m a-awful, and hate me. Just like Bridge. Like Arden’s going to! And anyone who doesn’t are… weak, and… but that’s all. He just said that I deserved bad things, because I’m bad, and he’s not wrong, is he? Is he? But that’s all. It doesn’t matter.’

Efnisien stared at the floorboards and fought to convince himself that Henton wasn’t in the room. He wasn’t doing a very good job. He felt exactly the way he used to feel when Henton was in the room. Like there was nowhere he could go, nowhere he could hide, and Henton’s voice and his eyes and his hands would find him no matter what.

He wanted to shield himself, his body, but he also knew Dr Gary would realise what he was doing. That somehow would feel like the opposite of shielding, so he stood there and forced himself not to move.

‘He is wrong,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Nothing he said was correct. He was abusing you, Efnisien.’

‘No, but- I mean maybe he started to, but- And I _deserved_ it, and just because I didn’t like it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t have happened. Like, at least it was me instead of someone who mattered, right? At least he did it to me instead of someone who mattered.’

‘But you do matter.’

Efnisien’s brain felt like it was imploding. He couldn’t follow the run of his thoughts like he normally could. He wanted to say it was okay if he mattered to the people who wanted to hurt him. But that contradicted knowing that he didn’t matter. He wanted to say he _didn’t_ matter actually, and Dr Gary was wrong, but he didn’t want Dr Gary to be wrong.

‘You do matter,’ Dr Gary said, cutting through Efnisien’s messy thoughts. ‘What happened to you matters, and you matter. It’s not okay that people ignore you when you say or indicate that you don’t like something.’

‘But I… I mean it _is_ okay,’ Efnisien said.

‘No, it’s not. That’s why Arden was so upset when he found out you’d had some bad days after you spent time together. That wasn’t naivete, or him not realising who you ‘really’ are, that was him being upset because you matter to him.’

‘But you ignored me when I said you were being mean,’ Efnisien said.

‘I was pushing you,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I apologise for being so heavy-handed, and hurting you.’

Efnisien’s forehead furrowed, he couldn’t look up from a whorl in one of the wooden planks, and a headache was settling into place.

Dr Gary sighed. ‘You were so vulnerable when you came to Hillview. You were so vulnerable to what Henton did to you. Efnisien, you say you can’t change, but you already have. You change and grow all the time. You stopped hurting people and animals with intent years ago. Even when you’re violent these days – which is rare – you take deliberate steps to _avoid_ hurting people. Don’t think I didn’t notice you check the location of me and the plant before you threw that book.’

Efnisien’s eyes closed. God, he was so fucking tired.

‘Why am I so sleepy all the time?’ Efnisien said.

‘Because what you deal with is incredibly difficult,’ Dr Gary said, ‘and sometimes your body needs you to rest.’

‘But on a street bench?’ Efnisien said. ‘It didn’t feel like something I had any control over.’

‘Trauma is exhausting. It simultaneously activates the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. In some animals, the shock such an event causes can kill them outright, even if the predator or whatever activated the response has long disappeared. In humans, that response causes extensive physiological reactions. One of yours is suddenly requiring sleep. I suspect it’s something of a coping mechanism. Things generally don’t get worse while a person is sleeping, so they can press pause and escape for a time.’

Efnisien didn’t know what to think about Dr Gary straight up calling the meeting with Bridge traumatising. Efnisien had just over-reacted.

‘Do you want to sleep now?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘I mean, I _could,’_ Efnisien said. ‘Yeah, I guess. But I felt sleepy when I got here. Like, I might’ve slept randomly yesterday, but I’ve slept like shit ever since.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘You think all of this reaction – how I reacted yesterday – isn’t just about Bridge, but it’s also connected to Henton,’ Efnisien said dully.

‘Partly, yes. I think it’s connected to Crielle, too. As soon as someone starts saying things to you that feed into the things you tell yourself – especially around the concept of being a bad person – I believe you begin to see those people as knowing more about you than you know about yourself. That was something Crielle taught you very early, and you never developed an adequate defence against it. After that, you’re stuck in the conflict of knowing you’re being hurt, but believing you deserve that hurt.’

‘So learned helplessness,’ Efnisien said, falling back on logic, because he didn’t want to think any of his actual thoughts anymore.

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said. ‘But understanding the mechanism of what’s happening, doesn’t stop you from being caught in these entrenched mental traps. I have some questions and I’d like you to think over your answers before you reply. Why did you agree to Uber to Bridge, when you’ve had problems using rideshares for a year?’

Efnisien looked up at Dr Gary in surprise. ‘Because… She told me to meet her… Because she told me to meet her somewhere public. And I’m not really walking anywhere except like here and the grocery store right now.’

‘Why didn’t you tell her that you had problems taking public transport or rideshares?’

‘Because I didn’t want her to come pick me up. And…like, what if she thought I was making it up? Or like I was trying to avoid her?’

‘Okay, thank you. So from the beginning, you didn’t feel comfortable telling her the truth?’

‘I told her a _ton_ of fucking truth at the burger place,’ Efnisien said under his breath.

‘No, you told her elements of your past. But you didn’t tell her how it made you feel to be obligated to disclose them, you didn’t tell her how you felt about the way she was treating you, and you didn’t tell her about what it was doing to you, to be cornered the way that you were. But let’s talk about that too. How did it feel, to talk about your past that way?’

‘Like nothing,’ Efnisien said. ‘Or- I guess like it just didn’t matter. I wanted to be accurate. I had to say things I didn’t want to say. But that’s what Bridge wanted.’

_Oh._

‘I thought, actually,’ Efnisien continued, ‘while I was in there… that if she took me outside and asked me to stay still, I’d let her fucking deck me. As many times as she wanted,’ Efnisien said. ‘It was like an, um, an intrusive thought. You know.’

‘I see,’ Dr Gary said.

‘Just whatever she wanted, to get it over with, you know?’ Efnisien said. ‘Or even just to make her happier with me. Maybe that would’ve made her happy.’

‘Do you think it made that other man happy? Stephanie’s brother?’

‘…Yes?’ Efnisien said, not wanting to think back to when he walked back from Arden’s bookshop that time, and unable to help himself. ‘Maybe? I mean, maybe not, because it’s not like it undid anything that I did to Stephanie. But if he was doing it for himself, like you said he could have been, then maybe?’

‘Efnisien,’ Dr Gary said slowly, looking off briefly to the side. ‘If someone who you’d never met before, came up to you and said they didn’t like you, and then said they wanted to be violent to you, what would you do?’

Efnisien shrugged.

‘Can you give me a verbal answer?’ Dr Gary prompted.

Unwittingly, Efnisien thought of the time he’d gone nonverbal in Hillview. All the times he’d gone nonverbal over that year. He sighed.

‘I mean yeah, I guess. Maybe I’d run or something. I dunno.’

‘What about Gwyn? Would you let Gwyn be violent to you?’

‘Of course,’ Efnisien said. ‘I fucking deserve it. And that dude could like, god, kill me _so_ easily. He’s really got Lludd’s genes, y’know? I used to watch, sometimes, when he did wrestling. Dude got called off by referees more times than I can count. Like he had height and muscle but he just… He once pulled this guy’s arm straight out of its socket and he was still pulling like he was gonna rip it straight off when the referee got through to him. Only reason he didn’t get suspended is that the guy had pulled a dirty move first. But Gwyn sure finished him off. And he broke, um, Augus’ brother’s nose, not for self-defence, but straight up just because he didn’t like that the guy had keyed the Coach’s car.’

‘What about Arden? If Arden said he wanted to be violent to you, what would you do?’

‘He wouldn’t do that,’ Efnisien said. ‘Like, he just wouldn’t do that.’

‘But if he did?’

‘Then it wouldn’t…’ Efnisien’s forehead creased. He was going to say: _Then it wouldn’t be Arden._ But it might be, one day. What if Arden got angry at him one day? What if – like Bridge – he suddenly couldn’t get past all the things he’d done? What if he decided he hated Laurie and was glad his brother had killed himself, and thought Efnisien should do the same? Or what if he looked at Isabelle one day and thought of Efnisien killing animals, and was overcome with rage because of it? What if he felt betrayed? Or tricked?

What then?

‘Maybe…I’d ask him not to,’ Efnisien said softly. ‘Maybe I’d just ask him first. And then I’d let him, if he decided he still wanted to.’

‘Is there anyone else you think you’d ask not to hurt you?’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien shook his head. He knew how crazy it sounded, but he didn’t care. He felt placid. The realisation that he’d let pretty much anyone hurt him, unprovoked, was calming. He didn’t want to be hurt, but…

It was okay if people wanted to hurt him.

‘What about me?’ Dr Gary said.

‘Oh, I’d let you,’ Efnisien said. ‘I’ve put you through hell for years. You can do whatever you want.’

‘I see,’ Dr Gary said.

‘But I don’t want you to,’ Efnisien said in a rush, helpless to stop the memories of Henton flowing in. The placid, passive space evaporated and left him abruptly drowning. ‘I don’t want you to. Please don’t.’

Dr Gary was silent, and Efnisien looked up a whole minute later. Dr Gary’s expression was strange, like he was almost smiling, but his expression was sad. And Efnisien realised he’d asked Dr Gary not to hurt him.

‘So, that’s two people,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I think we’re going to need to improve on that, Efnisien. What do you think?’

‘I dunno,’ Efnisien said. ‘Seems like the world is a safer place this way.’

Dr Gary didn’t anything, and Efnisien could practically hear him saying that it wasn’t safer for Efnisien, and besides, it wouldn’t be helpful to his recovery and rehabilitation, and those things made the world safer for other people as well. But he was tired. He stared longingly at the chair, but he felt like he’d made a firm decision to _not_ sit, and he’d be humiliating himself somehow if he sat down again.

Besides, his skin still crawled. Henton was somehow still in the room. Efnisien wanted to close his eyes to see if it would get rid of the feeling, but he had a feeling it would make it worse.

Dr Gary cleared his throat. ‘I’m disturbed by the way Bridge refuses to use your name, since that’s a measure often used to assert authority over another person, even dehumanise them. Even if it’s not meant as an attack, she may be doing it for her own sake, to maintain distance between you both.’

‘Probably because she felt sorry for me and is mad that she felt that way.’

‘Possibly,’ Dr Gary said quietly. ‘It also disturbs me that she more than once tried to martyr Crielle, or make her seem like your victim. She likely has her own reasons for doing that, but I don’t support you spending time around people who have a vested interest in making you feel like you were the one who harmed Crielle. It’s taken us a very long time for you to even recognise that Crielle was…a complicated figure in your life who has done some, let us say, questionable things.’

‘Tactful,’ Efnisien muttered. He could see the way Dr Gary almost fumbled the sentence, discarding all of the harsher things he wanted to say.

‘Thank you,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Do you want to try sitting down now? You can always stand again if you wish.’

Efnisien stared at the chair and then stepped hesitantly away from the wall. ‘Can I move the chair further away?’

‘Of course,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Would you like me to do that for you?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. He grabbed the back of the chair and pulled it further away from Dr Gary and then sat. He felt the way his muscles began to go lax, tired of keeping him upright and tense.

‘Do you want me to talk to Bridge?’ Dr Gary said.

‘What? I mean yeah. Why?’

‘I don’t know how constructive it will be. But also, when you were relating the conversation back to me, you didn’t seem comfortable with the idea of her talking to me.’

‘Well, yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘Just- Because like… I don’t know. I don’t mind Gwyn talking to you as much, because he met you years ago and he knows you. But she doesn’t know you. And it feels like that part of my life is like, it’s…’

‘Yes?’

‘Maybe kind of private,’ Efnisien said, frowning. ‘But it’s not, right?’

‘It is. That’s why we have confidentiality together, which is only broken if you allow me to break it with verbal or written permission, or if I believe you’re a danger to others or to yourself. And even then, I wouldn’t break your confidentiality by telling everyone, but by alerting specific sources to your condition.’

‘I just… I just wanted her to like me,’ Efnisien said, his voice small. ‘I liked her. But now she’s gonna talk to you and even if she changes her mind, she didn’t change her mind because of anything I’ve done, or not done. It’s like it has nothing to do with me anymore. It doesn’t matter how I act, or what I do.’

‘That’s certainly how she appeared to treat you. At this point, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with you attending choir again until I have talked to Bridge and had a chance to assess the situation myself. I’m sorry, Efnisien, I expected groups might be challenging, but not quite like this. I know Bridge has communicated in a way that indicates she’s worried for her safety, but frankly, I’m concerned about yours. I think you would put yourself through an awful lot to prove yourself to her, and – at least from my perspective – our goal isn’t to teach you how to jump hurdles for people who have very little interest in you as a _person.’_

Efnisien had both of his legs on the chair now, his heels resting on the edge. His arms were around his shins, he didn’t care how he looked to Dr Gary. They’d talked about Henton, and Hillview, and Crielle, and Bridge. Efnisien was about ready to shoot the entire week into the sun. Fuck, he was ready to put his head in a fucking blender.

That would be disgusting and awesome and hopefully really fucking painful.

‘I don’t even know if she’ll believe anything you say,’ Efnisien said. ‘She made it pretty clear that she thought I was lying to you.’

‘Do you want to go back to choir?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said.

That wasn’t quite true. He wanted it to be like it was. When he was singing with everyone, and they were starting to like him, and it felt new and weird and like it couldn’t last.

Hilarious. Because it hadn’t lasted.

‘How do you feel about texting her now, to say that you’re not going back?’ Dr Gary said.

‘I don’t want to do that. I don’t know. I like… I do like the people there.’

‘There’s no reason you won’t like people in other groups, unless it’s not a very friendly group.’

Efnisien stared off towards the door. He didn’t feel like this session had helped with anything. He didn’t want to talk anymore. He didn’t see the point. It was how he’d started to feel in Henton’s sessions. That dude loved the sound of his own voice anyway. He could create whole narratives out of Efnisien’s file alone. Efnisien never needed to say a thing.

Efnisien forced himself to look at Dr Gary, to make sure it was still him. And then he had to look away again.

‘Arden’s going to turn out like Bridge,’ Efnisien said.

‘I don’t think that’s true,’ Dr Gary said. ‘But…it is true it might end in a way you don’t want it to.’

‘So then why bother with any of this? I don’t need people or friends that badly, you know. I don’t need to go through this all the time. I didn’t need anyone except Crielle growing up. And eventually you’ll stop wanting to see me, and then I’ll be fine on my own.’

‘You’ve said yourself that you liked Gwyn and loved him very much in that household,’ Dr Gary said. ‘You’ve described him as someone you’ve needed more than once. But let’s, for now, talk about the conversation I’m going to have with Bridge, if that’s all right with you. I’d like to have a clearer idea of what information you’re going to let me release, so I can decide if you need to sign a form.’

They talked about that for about five minutes, and Dr Gary decided that Efnisien did need to sign a legal permission form, and modified one that he already had on his computer and then printed it in Mack’s office. He went out to fetch it and brought it back. Efnisien flinched backwards when Dr Gary handed it to him on a clipboard, and then gingerly took the form and the pen. He read it hurriedly, then signed it. Instead of handing it back, he put it on Dr Gary’s desk.

He noticed the hardback book, there where he’d thrown it, its pages bent. His fingers curled in his lap.

‘Um. I’m sorry about the book. Do you want me to pay for it?’

Dr Gary turned and looked at the book, then pursed his lips. ‘I don’t think that will be necessary, but thank you for offering.’

Efnisien nodded. He stared at his hands in his lap. ‘I didn’t want to tell her any of it. Like I didn’t mind telling her that I’d hurt people and animals, but I didn’t want to tell her the rest. It’s not just that it feels like making excuses for why I am the way I am, but… I don’t like it.’

‘You don’t like talking about your past?’

‘No, it’s…’ Efnisien said. ‘I don’t like my past. That’s dumb, right?’

‘No,’ Dr Gary said soberly. ‘I don’t think that’s dumb at all. Your past includes traumatising, difficult subject matter about something you’re still coming to terms with, which takes a toll on you even when you share it in safe circumstances, with people you trust. Instead, you were pressured to share that information in an unsafe public location, with someone who alternatively told you to ‘shut the fuck up,’ told you that you were potentially a liar, and then demanded that she be given access to me, to verify something that was already very taxing for you to share in the first place.’

‘Didn’t feel that taxing.’

‘Might I remind you that you fell asleep immediately afterwards in public? On a street bench?’ Dr Gary said.

‘So you think…what? Dissociation?’

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I do think you were dissociated as a way to cope with the trauma of what occurred. Likely, the dissociation started early, but that doesn’t mean you’re not still being traumatised, Efnisien. Just because your brain is telling you everything is fine, or that you feel a million miles away, doesn’t mean you’re fine. The best way to understand whether it’s fine or not, is to look at your physiological responses, as well as the number of intrusive thoughts you’re having and whether or not they’ve increased.’

‘Goddamn it,’ Efnisien said quietly.

‘A quick segue, but I wanted to congratulate you on coming up with the emoji signalling system with Arden. That sounds useful and practical, and a great compromise when you’re not feeling able to articulate how you’re feeling.’

Efnisien gave a tired thumbs up. God he really…did not feel good at all.

‘I thought this would help,’ he said.

‘You came in looking unwell, and you are suffering from a stress response. Now you’re more aware of why that is, but that won’t always solve why you feel bad. It’s also – I’ll freely admit – been a messy session. I don’t think I’d ever fully appreciated how much Crielle’s conditioning of you made you vulnerable to others, and I already knew you were incredibly vulnerable to others. Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like to bump back up to twice-weekly sessions for a little while.’

Efnisien pouted from behind his knees, where Dr Gary couldn’t see his expression. ‘I’m that much of a mess, huh?’

‘We’ve had a good little break with the weekly sessions, but you have a lot going on in your life right now. I’m actually really impressed at how much you’re doing these days, but it stands to reason that doing more potentially brings up more issues that we need to look at. As always, it’s only temporary. And if you don’t want to, we don’t need to do it at all.’

‘No, it’s probably for the best,’ Efnisien said. ‘I’m just- I dunno. Tired.’

‘Is it just tiredness?’ Dr Gary asked gently.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It looks a little to me like you might be feeling sad.’

Efnisien’s mind stumbled over the word. He hardly ever used it. He didn’t feel _sad_ about stuff. At most, he sometimes used the word to mean pathetic, but he never actually…felt sad about things. Did he? Did people feel sad about stuff?

He looked up at Dr Gary in confusion.

‘Do I feel sad about things?’ Efnisien said. The question, as soon as he said it, sounded so stupid. But he honestly didn’t know.

Was he allowed?

‘I think it’s possible,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Someone who you respected and thought of with great esteem, treated you poorly. It’s normal to be angry and sad when that happens. After the week you’ve had, including Arden pulling back on your scenes for now – even though that makes sense – it’s all right to feel sad about it.’

‘But…’ Efnisien scratched little patterns into his jeans. He wanted to ask what it felt like. But he couldn’t ask that, could he? Everyone knew what sadness felt like.

‘Can I ask you what you were going to say?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘Just- How…can someone tell they feel sad? Is that stupid?’

‘It’s not stupid at all,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Especially since you grew up in an environment where feeling emotions like sadness was actively discouraged. Hm, let’s see. A person who is sad might be quiet and lethargic, or withdraw from others or life itself. Internally, it can feel like loss or disadvantage, despair, grief, emptiness, disappointment, or sorrow. Sometimes only one of those things, or many things at once. It can happen alongside other emotions, and severe sadness can become depression, or depression can bring on severe sadness. Sometimes people cry when they feel sad, but not always.’

Efnisien just nodded. Okay then, maybe he did feel sad. Crielle would think it was utter bullshit, but whatever.

‘When you feel this way,’ Dr Gary continued, ‘it can help to do things that feel good. Reading some of your favourite books, or reading something new. Maybe eating something you enjoy. But it’s also important to listen to your body, get the sleep that you need. Trauma isn’t just something that happens to your mind, it happens to all of you.’

‘Have I been really bad at therapy today?’

‘Not at all. What makes you think you’ve been bad at therapy today?’

‘I dunno. I yelled at you a lot. And called you mean. And said you were a quack. And then I dunno, just… Everything. And I cancelled on Mika. Which meant you didn’t get a break from speaking to me. And you had to deal with me instead. And now I’m just a lump.’

Dr Gary exhaled in a way that could almost have been laughter. But Efnisien didn’t see his expression at the time, and when he looked up, there was only an odd light in Dr Gary’s eyes that meant maybe he’d _wanted_ to laugh. Or maybe it meant something else.

‘Yelling at me and calling me mean is not outside of the scope of our sessions together,’ Dr Gary said with a wry smile. ‘Given I was pushing you very hard at the time, you showed remarkable self-restraint until you threw the book, and then you were able to restrain yourself immediately afterwards. You were responsive and cooperative despite feeling great distress and resistance, and showed a willingness to listen to me and what I had to say.

‘As for ‘getting a break from speaking to you,’ if I needed a break, I would talk with my supervisor and work something out. I was fully prepared to speak to you this session, and I remained prepared even if you’d talked to Mika the entire time. Efnisien, I don’t dislike our sessions. I’m not the one in this arrangement who’s hurting badly. I may hurt on your behalf sometimes, but on the whole I look forward to seeing you, hearing about the progress you’re making, and what’s been happening in your life.’

‘Have I even made any progress?’ Efnisien said. ‘All I did today was show you that I’m way more fucked up than you thought.’

‘No. What today has showed me is that I’ve not properly understood how you might respond specifically to strong women, and how willing you are to expose yourself to violence and abuse. Today has also showed me that you’re resourceful and resilient. When Arden chose to step back in the relationship, you handled it admirably and with empathy, something you would have insisted you weren’t capable of only a few months ago. You both brainstormed ways to help your relationship and your connection to each other, and you successfully came up with something that I think is going to be very useful, if you can manage to keep up with it.’

A tiny glow of warmth. One that Efnisien was embarrassed by, but he clung onto it anyway. But he still felt miserable, and he remembered older sessions like this. Where it was always like this.

‘Do you think I have to talk about Henton one day?’ Efnisien said, his voice small, higher than normal.

‘I think…it might be useful, yes,’ Dr Gary said. ‘But we’re in no rush, Efnisien.’

‘I brought him up,’ Efnisien said.

‘Yes, you did. Have you been thinking of him more often?’

‘I think so?’ Efnisien said. ‘Sometimes I have feelings and they’re like…Henton feelings. There’s Crielle feelings, and Lludd feelings, and Henton feelings. Do you think people can have feelings like that?’

‘Yes,’ Dr Gary said.

‘Henton once said I was a lot of fun,’ Efnisien said. He tried not to think about the memory that came with it. He opened his mouth, then heard a sound he couldn’t pinpoint. When he looked up, Dr Gary – aside from a tense mouth – looked like he hadn’t moved. But then Efnisien realised his fingers were digging into the armrest. Still there, still tense. ‘Sorry.’

‘When it comes to Henton, Efnisien, you have nothing to apologise for.’

‘I shouldn’t bring him up now.’

‘We don’t have time to talk about him now in any detail,’ Dr Gary said, and then he straightened his fingers and relaxed his hand. ‘It’s not wrong to bring him up. In fact, have you heard of doorknob revelations?’

Efnisien shook his head. Dr Gary smiled.

‘It’s common in therapy for clients to reveal important information, or glance on important subjects, in the last five to ten minutes of a session. Or even in the last thirty seconds, with their hand literally on the door; hence the name. Sometimes it happens because they aren’t aware of how much time is left. But often it happens because they know the session is almost over, which means we _can’t_ talk about it. You can think of it as a way to broach a dangerous subject without actually broaching that subject in a way that might harm you.’

‘Oh,’ Efnisien said. ‘That’s kind of cool.’

‘Isn’t it? Testing the waters with Henton makes sense. Now, as to the rest of your day... Once you get home, you might want to consider contacting Arden if he’s available. It’s okay to talk to people you care about when you’re feeling upset. If he’s not free, he’ll tell you, but if he is, it might help. Nothing will make the sadness go away until it’s ready to go away, but it can help not to be alone.’

Efnisien nodded and closed his eyes. Dr Gary kept talking, this time running over the form and the conversation with Bridge that was coming up, and Efnisien thought that he didn’t want to impose on Arden’s life…

Except that he really wanted to hear Arden’s voice.

‘Hey, Doc,’ Efnisien said. ‘If I want to talk to Arden, but feel like I’m the worst person in the world for bothering Arden, what do I do?’

‘At the moment you’re going to feel like a bad person no matter what you do, Efnisien, so you might as well talk to Arden in the meantime and get the benefit.’

‘That’s…’ Efnisien stared at Dr Gary. ‘Is that like a legit psychological loophole?’

‘That’s patented Dr Gary,’ he responded almost cheerfully, opening up his calendar on his laptop, which always looked super packed. ‘Actually no, it’s not, it’s a psychological technique. It’s generally phrased more professionally but the idea is that if you’re going to be sabotaged by your mind either way, you might as well do the thing that’s objectively more likely to be healthy. It might not work every time, but it might work for you tonight.’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said.

He rested his head on his knees again and watched Dr Gary look for a slot in his calendar. Despite everything, he knew he’d made the right decision, cancelling on Dr Mika. But he wished he didn’t feel so bad, but Dr Gary didn’t seem freaked out by it, and Efnisien was still turning over the word sadness, and wondering at the fact that he’d never really applied it to his life before.


	49. Park

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have all definitely earned some Arden time!

‘Okay, it’s your call, do you want to go out or do you want to stay in?’ Arden said, at the entrance to Efnisien’s apartment building.

It was late, eleven in the evening. Efnisien contacted Arden at nine. Arden said something about being busy, and then after a quick call, said he could come over once he was done with whatever he was doing, and now Efnisien was a combination of tired and excited and miserable and guilty and pleased all at once.

‘Do you think we should break up?’ Efnisien said.

Arden tilted his head at Efnisien, then pursed his lips. ‘Does Dr Gary?’

‘No, it’s not a Dr Gary thing. He doesn’t- He wouldn’t tell me to do things like that, I think, unless he thought I was in a lot of… Unless he thought it was bad for me or for you. He told me to like, talk to you, because he thinks you help me. But only if you have time! Because if I spend too much time with you, Dr Gary thinks I’ll get like, dependent, and then that would be bad, for like- for you. And I don’t want to be bad for you.’

Arden was starting to smile during the end of Efnisien’s rambling, and by the time Efnisien was done, his cheeks were clearly tight with the effort of not smiling or laughing outright. Efnisien felt defensive in response, his hand clenching on the door.

‘It’s not funny,’ he said.

‘It’s cute though,’ Arden said, his voice lower than before. ‘Come on. You ready to head out? Let’s go for a drive.’

‘Now?’

‘Mmhm. Don’t worry, Sleeping Beauty, I’ll get you home before everything comes up pumpkins. You’re ready, right?’

Efnisien nodded. He was, because Arden had suggested a walk earlier, which kind of blew Efnisien’s mind. Civilised people didn’t go out for walks so late at night, and he associated those late hours with criminals and Lludd’s shitty actions and Crielle asleep in bed like a princess, because she guarded her sleep zealously and was only ever up late if she was in her lab and absorbed with what she was doing. No one was allowed to talk to her then anyway.

Arden reached out and took Efnisien by the wrist, the motion easy and natural. It made Efnisien feel a little better about the fact that they weren’t doing scenes for now. Because Arden was still… _Arden._

After a short drive, they ended up at a large park around a huge manmade lake surrounded by grass and manicured gardens, along with huge wild Moreton Bay figs left to grow to unreasonable sizes, their sprawling above-ground roots splaying over the soil like sleepy, dark brown serpents. The park was well-lit, there was hardly anyone around. As they got out of the car, a guy flew by on his bicycle, and that was it. All the shadows were dark and impenetrable, but the moon gleamed on the water of the lake.

‘So why do you think we should break up?’ Arden said. ‘Like, don’t get me wrong, your heart doesn’t really seem to be in it.’

‘Uh, well. Bridge…you remember Bridge?’

‘Yeah, choir woman who was good to you and then changed her mind.’

‘She kind of said…’ Efnisien pressed the heel of his other hand to his forehead. ‘Actually maybe I should give you a cliff notes version or something. Dr Gary heard the whole thing already. But it’s- It’s so stupid, Arden.’

‘I doubt it. Why not tell me? We’re already at this park, it’s a nice night, we have time, don’t we?’

Efnisien was used to narrating events to Dr Gary, but he didn’t really know how to do it with Arden. Surely Arden didn’t want to know everything. But he also wasn’t going to forget Arden mentioning that he cared about honesty any time soon, either.

He gave Arden what he thought was a more condensed version, though he stumbled over the part where Bridge called Arden stupid and naïve.

Arden took in an audible breath, then seemed to hold it.

‘I understand where she’s coming from,’ he said finally, and Efnisien looked at him. ‘But you’re missing some of the picture too, Ef. You saying that I’m going to suddenly drop you, because I’ve imagined you being violent to Izzy or something… You don’t think I’ve imagined you trying to be violent to me or Izzy? It’s not like… I don’t know. It’s not like I haven’t considered that. I know what I’ll tolerate and what I won’t. I have my lines of what I consider acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, and I let you know when I think your behaviour is unacceptable.’

‘So far,’ Efnisien said.

‘I mean, I’ll always do that. I’m selfish enough to always do that,’ Arden said, laughing softly. ‘You need to get better at doing it for yourself. Other people have unacceptable behaviours too, Ef, even if they haven’t committed any crimes, or done things that are like, objectively terrible from the outside looking in. No one’s perfect, right? And sometimes the person that’s nice to ninety nine people will lose their shit at the hundredth, and that hundredth person doesn’t look back at the ninety nine and go, ‘Well it’s okay they treated me like shit because they were good to those ninety nine.’’

‘You’re not selfish,’ Efnisien said.

‘Sweetheart, I am _so_ selfish,’ Arden said. ‘I’m not even- You don’t have to reassure me, I came to terms with it a long time ago. I live a very selfish life. I do the things I want to do, when I want to do them, with the people I want to do them with. I have very firm lines around the things I accept and don’t accept, and I don’t give people much wiggle room with them. Like, it’s not all bad, but I have to help people realise they need to stand up for themselves around me. I have this habit of smiling and getting whatever I want.’

Efnisien laughed, and Arden squeezed his hand.

‘You kill them with kindness,’ Efnisien said.

‘I don’t,’ Arden said. He hesitated and looked sidelong at Efnisien. ‘Actually, I’m- I’m worried you’re putting me on this pedestal I really shouldn’t be on. Efnisien, there’s not something especially good about me because I like you, okay? I’m not doing you a favour. I’m doing _me_ a favour. I’m not even all that kind! Like, maybe your childhood makes you think basic decency is extreme kindness. It’s not.’

Efnisien tilted his head back and looked up at the stars. He wasn’t as cold here as he’d been at the beach that time with Arden. He liked the sound of waterbirds on the little forested islands in the middle of the lake. He couldn’t look at the lake itself for too long, because there were ducks there, and he’d been cruel to ducks.

He chewed on the inside of his cheek, then nodded towards the lake.

‘I’ve hurt ducks,’ Efnisien said.

‘Pretty much whatever you could get your hands on then, huh?’ Arden said, his voice a mixture of even and heavy at the same time.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said.

‘Do you want to do it now?’

‘No, it’s more like… I don’t like being reminded of the fact that I did do it. Which seems really cowardly. And I worry that if I look at them, I’ll get like- I won’t be able to stop thinking about what I did. I don’t remember things like that in a normal way. It’s all really hyper…sensory. Is that a word? That’s not a word.’

‘Explains it, though,’ Arden said. ‘Why don’t you like being reminded of what you did?’

‘Because I hate that I did it,’ Efnisien admitted. Arden squeezed his hand again, and Efnisien made himself look at the ducks that were slowly swimming behind them, hoping for some bread or corn. His brain threw up discordant images, sharp and unpleasant, but they didn’t reach deep inside him like they normally did, as though Efnisien had more of a shield around him.

He wanted to apologise to the ducks, but he’d never hurt these ones, and they wouldn’t understand anyway.

But he was still sorry.

‘If I suddenly decide I don’t want to be with you anymore,’ Arden said, picking up the conversation they’d started earlier – something Arden did a lot, ‘then it will be because of something you did _now._ Okay? It’s not going to be because I’ve ‘suddenly realised’ how terrible you are. And I think Bridge doesn’t understand a lot of my own mitigating- Like you didn’t tell her about Laurie, did you?’

‘It’s none of her fucking business,’ Efnisien said. He was shocked at the heat in his voice. ‘Sorry.’

‘No, I mean you’re right. It’s not any of her business, and I’m grateful you didn’t tell her, because I don’t- I know I shared that story all at once with you, but I don’t tell it to everyone. But she doesn’t understand or know me, she doesn’t know what I have in my history that makes me more able to handle people who are complicated. Or if she knew, maybe it wouldn’t matter. Maybe she’d think I missed Laurie so badly I’d imprint on anyone who’d done shitty things.’

‘Arden,’ Efnisien said, pulling his hand away and shoving it into his pocket. ‘Arden, look, I’m sorry, but sometimes I think that too.’

Arden sighed. ‘Well. I talked to my therapist about it. A lot actually. Because maybe I thought it as well.’

Efnisien looked at him in shock, and Arden looked up at him from under his eyelashes, and then winked.

‘But I don’t generally imprint on people who’ve done shitty things, especially if they’re still doing them,’ Arden said, his smile widening. ‘In fact, my therapist helped me remember I’m pretty good at doing the opposite of that. And – as I pointed out to you ages ago – I hold the balance of power in our relationship and you have never really tried to seriously make a play for it. At most, when you’ve been scared, you’ve tried to redirect a little in scenes. Which, honestly, mostly everyone does at one point or another.’

‘So you don’t think Laurie has anything to do with…this?’

‘Actually I think he does,’ Arden said pensively. ‘I think I was initially fascinated with you because of everything with Laurie. But then I got to know _you,_ as like, a person. And I stopped thinking about you that way.’

‘I just don’t want to hurt you because I make you think of him,’ Efnisien said. ‘Because we both- Because we…’

Arden hooked his arm through Efnisien’s. It made Efnisien stumble a little before he found his footing again.

‘I don’t want that either, but you don’t really make me think of him. I mean everyone can make me think of him sometimes, but that’s different,’ Arden said.

They kept walking in silence, and Efnisien felt grounded. He didn’t feel he had to rush to break up the relationship for Arden’s safety, though the fear that maybe he was cheating the system and Arden would end up hurt because of it, remained. But Arden’s arm hooked through his was kind of nice, and he’d never done anything like this before, walking through a park at night. There were far less people, no children so far, and though he saw a couple of people walking their dogs, it wasn’t as overwhelming as during the day.

The green was different. Dark and murky, or sometimes not like green at all when the moonlight or streetlight hit the leaves or grass. It became soft and silvery instead. The lake’s water was dark, and the birds were dark too, except for where the light limned them.

He wasn’t used to thinking of the world as being a beautiful place, but it kind of wasn’t that bad, actually.

At least not right now.

‘Ef, I wanted to talk to you about something,’ Arden said, his voice serious. ‘And it’s- It’s a difficult thing, because it’s something you haven’t wanted, but – this is my selfishness again – it’s something I want from you.’

‘Sex,’ Efnisien said. He wasn’t even sure what he thought about that. He was pretty sure Arden would make sex amazing, but even that was terrifying. Arden touching him was enough to destroy Efnisien’s mind.

‘No,’ Arden said, laughing. ‘Though don’t get me wrong! I think that’d be fucking awesome. Ah, actually, it’s about your abdomen. And not wanting me to see it. I know I said you didn’t need a reason to have a boundary, and you don’t, but I guess I’m just…concerned that you don’t want me to see the scars because of what they’re connected to, and I have the opinion that maybe it would help to have someone else accept them.’

Efnisien couldn’t think of what to say. He wanted to press his other hand to his belly, like he’d wanted to do almost constantly at Kadek’s, especially once Arden knew what Crielle had done to him. The urge to protect it didn’t go away, it got worse.

But he couldn’t deny there was a part of him that wanted Arden to see the scars. After all, nurses and doctors had. But that part of him was drowned by the fear of someone seeing that ugliness, seeing what he’d caused in the first place.

‘You’ve experienced so much violence,’ Arden said. ‘I know you’ve been violent, sweetheart, but you’re so quick to tell me that, and so slow to tell me about the violence you’ve been forced to endure. Maybe I’d like to show that part of you some love.’

Efnisien panicked, yanking his hand out of his pocket so he could slide his arm away from Arden’s. But Arden was already moving away, giving him the space. Efnisien’s forearms jerked up, his hands wanting to go over his stomach, and he felt like he couldn’t, and he hated that.

‘Can you…? Can you not look at me for a second?’ Efnisien said.

Arden nodded and looked up at the rising hill of grass and rose bushes they were passing. Efnisien placed his hands over his belly and felt something immediately settle. He had no idea what it was, or why it helped. Beneath his hands, he could feel the dull background cramps that hadn’t really left him alone since he’d talked with Bridge. They were grinding, menacing things, but he’d managed to eat some rice that day, and even though it was plain with only a little salt, he still liked it.

‘Why don’t you like doing that when I can see it?’ Arden said.

Efnisien stared at the back of his head. ‘Okay _how_ do you know I’m doing…what I’m doing?’

‘I guessed,’ Arden said, and Efnisien thought he could hear a smile in his voice. ‘I could hear the fabric of your clothing moving.’

‘I could have pulled out a knife,’ Efnisien said.

‘Bet you a thousand bucks you didn’t, sweetheart,’ Arden said warmly.

Efnisien sniffed and then shrugged and then sighed. ‘The reason I do this is stupid.’

‘I bet it’s not. But could you tell me anyway?’ Arden said.

They rounded a curve, and nearby a swan fluted out its call. Efnisien saw its silhouette, its graceful arched neck, and wondered when he’d started liking animals again. It was a strange realisation to know it was something he was returning to, instead of something he was learning from scratch. At first, he hadn’t wanted to accept the knowledge that he liked that puppy when he was a child, that he didn’t really want to hurt it. But now he was pretty sure there was a time he liked all animals. They were interesting and cool, and sometimes weird, like that snail that tried to eat him.

‘It doesn’t really feel like I’m protecting myself anymore if you know why I’m doing it in the first place,’ Efnisien said. ‘Which, now that I say it out loud, sounds irrational as fuck. It feels like you’ve caught me out. Or maybe it’s just embarrassing. I’m like, a grown ass adult, and I shouldn’t need to do shit like this.’

‘Does it help to do it?’ Arden asked.

‘I mean- Yeah.’

‘Then… I want you to do the things that help you. And if those things also let me know you’re feeling protective of that part of yourself, that helps me as well. Ef, you were literally _stabbed_ in the _gut_ by a family member, and then _abandoned_ , that’s really bad. Of course you have some hang ups over it. Anyone would.’

Efnisien pursed his lips, and Arden looked over at him. He could tell Arden was being careful not to look down at his stomach, and a part of him melted.

‘You can look if you want,’ Efnisien said. ‘You don’t have to pretend I’m not doing it.’

So Arden looked down at Efnisien’s hands over his jumper, on his stomach, and Efnisien forced himself to keep his hands in place. It wasn’t as hard as before. Because Arden didn’t make fun or say Efnisien was being stupid. And then Arden looked at the path again, and things seemed normal.

‘You really want to see…’ Efnisien said hesitantly. ‘…How? Like, how would you…? Do I just lift my jumper when I go to yours, or something?’

‘I don’t know,’ Arden said. ‘I was thinking maybe in a scene, in the future, and then I could talk you through it. It could maybe help you to get into a subspace where you felt safer? It wouldn’t have to be something we did all the time. I could check in to see how you feel about it on the day. Liking something one day doesn’t mean an unconditional yes. Especially for something so sensitive and honestly, triggery for you. Do the stomach issues you get- Like your food issues, is that all because of what she did to you?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said. ‘Mostly, but also no. I’ve had stomach stuff all my life. She used to give me drugs for it. Because like, it’s not very becoming to be running to the toilet all the time or whatever.’

‘You haven’t done that much around me,’ Arden said.

‘I don’t eat before I see you,’ Efnisien said.

Arden looked at him in alarm, and Efnisien shrugged.

‘I don’t eat before seeing anyone.’

‘God almighty,’ Arden muttered. ‘Efnisien, you need to see a specialist or something. Or-’

‘I don’t want to,’ Efnisien said, his voice firmer than before. ‘But also like, you know, gastroenterologists can’t cure everything. I did actually have to see them the mandatory amount of times while I was at Hillview, and they told me a lot of it was just like, nerve or scar tissue damage, or like, stress or anxiety, and that pain was normal after what happened to me anyway. They told me to be grateful they didn’t have to remove more than twenty five percent of my liver and that I was lucky to escape with my intestinal tract basically intact. And to come in if I started shitting dark blood or basically couldn’t keep anything down.’

‘Still. It’s been years, and you need to _eat.’_

‘I fucking eat,’ Efnisien said, then realised how defensive he was sounding from the way Arden looked at him. He shook his head, annoyed at himself. ‘Sorry. I’ve been in a weird mood since seeing Bridge. I’m getting my back up, and it’s not- I just- I do eat! I know it’s not much. I’m still learning how. And I couldn’t afford much, for a long time, and I can afford more now. It’s not like I’ve refused to eat around you! I’m always eating around you!’

‘You said once… that your aunt didn’t like you to eat food if it tasted good,’ Arden said slowly. He raised one of his hands like he wanted to cover his face or his forehead, and then abruptly dropped it. ‘The picture I keep building up is so bad, Ef. And I think from all the bits and pieces you let go, it’s so much worse than that.’

‘It’s not,’ Efnisien said. ‘It’s nothing like what you went through.’

‘It’s not a competition,’ Arden said. ‘But also, like, you- The way you talk about her, like she’s still the best thing to have ever happened to you… I knew, as soon as Laurie did what he did, that he’d done something wrong. Even he knew. But you don’t know! Like maybe a little, but not really.’

‘Do we have to talk about this?’ Efnisien said, aware that he sounded whiny. He folded his arms. ‘I know I have to be more honest and shit, but this sucks.’

‘It does,’ Arden said, explosively sighing. ‘We don’t have to talk about it.’

‘But it’s going to keep coming up.’

‘Yes, it will, but I don’t want it to be like…what happened with Bridge. I don’t want to force you to talk about it.’

‘You don’t have to worry about that,’ Efnisien said darkly, jamming his hands into his pockets again. ‘It’s already not the same. You haven’t told me to ‘shut the fuck up’ for apologising, for a start. No, just- I don’t know…talking about everything- It’s like with Dr Gary. I get that his goal is to make me hate my aunt, even if he won’t say that specifically. Or at least he wants me to see that my childhood was shitty. But so what?’

‘What do you mean?’ Arden said. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well who cares? Who cares if it’s shitty? So what? Most people’s childhoods aren’t that great, let’s be real. It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t excuse anything I did. So who fucking cares?’

‘I mean, I do,’ Arden said, sounding incredulous.

‘But it’s like all of nature is the same,’ Efnisien said. ‘Most of the animals out there don’t have like, rosy idyllic childhoods or anything. Birds hatch out of eggs only to be eaten by other birds or snakes or whatever. Dogs die of mange. Animals get hit by cars. People step on bugs. Everyone struggles on some level.’

‘So…your point is that because something is almost universal, it no longer matters?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said.

‘But you could say that about anything. You could say that about life, and living.’

‘I mean yeah,’ Efnisien said. ‘Like I know it’s dark, but like, there’s ultimately no point to being here, and no point to being alive. None of it matters.’

‘Right,’ Arden said slowly. Then: ‘ _Boo,_ Efnisien. _Boo!_ That’s so depressing!’

‘You can’t boo me,’ Efnisien said, aware that his face was doing something complicated, like he was trying to smile and frown and find Arden endearing and annoying at the same time.

_‘Boo!_ Efnisien is a nihilist of the worst order! But hey, hotshot, I have a question for you. You don’t think – by _any_ chance – that you’re absolutely depressing worldview has something to do with the fact that your tiny child brain was absolutely destroyed by a completely devastating childhood?’

‘I mean…’ Efnisien said, rolling his eyes.

‘By your argument, _my_ life doesn’t matter! I could just die right now!’ Arden said, skipping forward a few steps and throwing his arms in the air. ‘Goodbye to Arden Mercury, who lived on Fairway Crescent! Isabelle will be just as happy with anyone else because nothing truly matters!’

‘I don’t mean you!’ Efnisien snapped. ‘You’d better not…’

Arden had already turned around, and was walking backwards with a bright gleam in his brown eyes. Here, at night, they looked pitch black. He looked like he’d wanted Efnisien’s annoyed response, and Efnisien ran the script forwards and realised what Arden was trying to do.

‘Look, okay, maybe _my_ life doesn’t matter and _your_ life does, and if you tell me that’s like, egotistical or like, irrational, I don’t care, okay? That’s the way I think!’

‘Naw,’ Arden said, closing the distance between them and slinging an arm around Efnisien’s shoulders. ‘I matter to you.’

‘You’re literally like a fucking twelve year old. How old are you again?’

‘So old,’ Arden said melodramatically. ‘I already get back pain in the mornings. But that’s because I’ve been doing judo all my life. But more importantly, I got you to admit that I matter to you. I’m feeling chuffed.’

‘It wasn’t a secret,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘I know, but I still like to hear you say it,’ Arden said, shaking him a little. ‘Anyway, your nihilism makes sense, given everything you went through. That is – maybe a bit ironically – why what everything you went through matters. Like I know people who had happy childhoods can still make it all the way through to existential despair all on their own, but you had a lot of fucking help, sweetheart.’

They’d walked halfway around the lake, and on this side, Efnisien saw less cars, more shadows. He kept expecting to see evil people hanging around the place. People like him. People like Berdella. Shadows in the shadows. But aside from a dark mass that bolted from one bush to another – that turned out to be a cat – he didn’t see anything.

He was walking around with his boyfriend like he was prey, instead of being the hunter.

It made them weak, vulnerable.

If Crielle was watching, she’d say that he deserved whatever terrible things happened to him.

Abruptly, he stopped walking and hating himself for the urge, he ducked his head down and pressed his forehead into Arden’s shoulder.

‘Hey,’ Arden said quietly, voice hushed, his other arm looping carefully around Efnisien’s shoulders. ‘Hey, sweetheart, what’s wrong?’

Efnisien shook his head.

He just wanted to be a guy, someone who could walk in a park at night with his boyfriend. He wasn’t sure he could ever be that. But the alternative was also too horrible to contemplate. Someone in the shadows, looking for some person or animal to hunt. Someone who would report back to Crielle obediently, and look for the joy and pleasure in her eyes when he said he’d done something particularly cruel. And through that, her joy became his joy, and he got to live through her.

And that was what life was supposed to be.

‘Okay,’ Arden was saying quietly, under his breath. ‘Okay, flower, we can just stay like this for a little while.’

His arms tightened around Efnisien’s back, which had hunched to better match Arden’s height. Efnisien hated being taller, and at moments like this he felt like he stood out, and he didn’t like it at all.

‘I’ve got you,’ Arden said.

‘Sorry,’ Efnisien said.

‘No, no, you’re fine. It’s fine. Do you want to talk about it?’

‘I’m just…’ Efnisien tipped his face to the side. Arden was warm through his clothing. His shoulders were strong. Arden was a judoka and could probably fight off anyone who came at them, which meant even if Efnisien was prey…

He screwed his face up. He hated thinking this way.

‘I’m just scared, I think,’ Efnisien said. ‘I keep imagining bad things happening to us.’

_And I miss her, so fucking much._

Arden made a soft, comforting noise, and Efnisien felt the way his body relaxed more just from hearing it.

‘Can I hug you back?’ Efnisien whispered.

‘Yes,’ Arden said. ‘Of course.’

Efnisien nodded, then hesitantly reached around with one of his arms, carefully resting his palm over Arden’s back. And he thought this was pretty fucking gay, actually, the two of them standing like this in public, where anyone could see them. He didn’t really care. He almost wanted to ask if Arden would protect him, which pretty firmly put him in the category of ‘the fucking girl in the relationship.’ But Mika would probably have something to say about that, and Efnisien had given up trying to understand much more beyond knowing that he liked Arden, and he wanted to be with him.

‘This Sunday,’ Arden said quietly, against the side of Efnisien’s head, ‘I thought we could watch some TV together, and you could just rest next to me, okay? Low key, it’ll be nice. Nothing too draining. How does that sound?’

Efnisien nodded. No scenes for now, but there was still something pretty magical about getting to rest his head on Arden’s lap and watch TV. It was more than anything he’d had growing up. Which was a dangerous thing to think.

‘Thanks for coming over tonight,’ Efnisien said. And then he yawned hugely against Arden’s shoulder, before he could stop himself.

‘Oh dear, might be time to get Sleeping Beauty back home soon. And it’s okay. I had time, and I’m glad you reached out. I know you’re trying really hard to keep me in the loop, and that it’s not natural for you. Hopefully, you can sort of see that like… It’s not the end of the world to loop me in when you’re not doing so great.’

‘It’s not annoying?’

‘It’s not,’ Arden said.

‘Will you tell me more about what’s happening in your life though? With like the dojo thing that you talked to Kadek about?’

Arden gently separated from the embrace, but then lowered his hands to Efnisien’s waist, fingers digging in a little.

‘We can talk about that if you want?’ Arden said. ‘And then we’ll head back when we finish walking around the lake. How does that sound?’

‘Okay,’ Efnisien said, nodding. ‘I hope you don’t think you can’t tell me about your life. Like- I know I have stuff going on, all the time, but I want to know. I want to know things about you. Even…hard things.’

‘Yeah, of course. I didn’t think to tell you partly because Kadek’s also done a lot of martial arts, so he knows what the politics is like. But I’m always willing to vent about the dojo, sweetheart, trust me. You good to keep walking?’

Efnisien nodded, and Arden took Efnisien by the hand and they set off again, tracing the edge of the lake with their steps. This time, when he looked at the shadows, they seemed more like shadows, and less like nightmares lying in wait. A faint throb in his body remained, the part of him that couldn’t let Crielle go, or the way she’d be judging him for living his life this way, what she’d think of him, what she’d say to him.

But then Arden caught his attention, and Efnisien forgot that he was behaving like prey, and focused on listening to his boyfriend instead.


	50. Remorse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 50! My god. It’s still not got anything on Game Theory’s word count but we’re definitely getting there! A huge thank you to everyone who has come along on the journey this far. We’re over the halfway point, which is amazing to me. I hope you enjoy the rest of the ride!

_Hey,_ Efnisien typed, staring intently at his phone and feeling like his hands were shaking even though they weren’t.

Then he stopped and stared at the ceiling. It was Monday night, he was seeing Dr Gary the next day. He’d spent Sunday at Arden’s, watching a new season of _Great British Bake Off,_ getting way too invested in both the people and the things they were making. The show made him kind of hungry. That was good, because Arden made chocolate chip cookies and then a mild curry thing that was amazing.

He’d thought it would be awkward at Arden’s, not having a scene together, but then he realised there were a lot of things he liked about spending time with Arden. Watching TV with Arden idly petting him, or both of them chatting, or talking about their favourite contestants, was all stuff he enjoyed.

He came _so_ close to being able to pat Isabelle, but chickened out at the last minute. He thought maybe he’d actually be able to do pet her again one day. The memory of the texture of her fur against his hand was so vivid, and she’d been newly clipped this time, so he wanted to see how different she’d feel. She looked so velvety.

Efnisien deleted his message and started again.

_I was wondering if we could go about another two weeks before catching up,_ Efnisien wrote. Yeah, he was definitely feeling shaky. _I know it stresses you out, and I’m sorry, but I think things are going okay and I’m not asking for this because I want to hurt anyone._

Efnisien took a slow breath that was supposed to be deep, but was still shallow. He forced himself up from the couch and paced. After a while, he stared at a patch on the floor, then looked at one of his cushions. It wasn’t really flat enough. Or square enough. He’d probably slip off if he knelt on it.

Also what the fuck was he thinking? Kneeling on the floor wasn’t going to make him feel better.

‘Come the fuck on,’ he muttered to himself.

He stared at what he’d written, then forced himself to sit at the table.

_Look, I get that I’ve been the worst to you, all your life. And that I haven’t helped things lately either. And I know apologising doesn’t make up for any of it, but I am sorry. For all of it. You were supposed to have a normal and good childhood, and I was a big reason for you not having that. And I know I should say this in person, and I will one day, but right now I just don’t know that I’m not going to become a giant stressed dickface when we’re face to face._

He thought about apologising for how he’d treated Augus, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not when thinking about him still made a bitter well of thorns open up inside. Not yet.

As it was, his words were stupid. He knew they were stupid.

_Anyway, I think we should start maybe going a bit longer before you come over. It’s not like you get a ton of out visiting me, and I’m starting to have something in my life and sometimes I feel like I’m never going to change when you come over. That’s not your fault, but I need to feel like I can change if I want to keep changing. So, let me know what’s good for you._

He typed in a black heart emoji, then deleted it, then typed it, then deleted it.

Then he typed it back in and sent the message. He threw down his phone on the table like it was poisonous and walked away from the desk straight into his bedroom, where he flopped dramatically onto his bed and made a strangled sound into his blankets.

_‘Fuck,’_ he groaned.

His heart pounded. He felt awful. After a while – feeling like an idiot but unable to stop himself – he rolled up in his blanket until he was fully cocooned and lay there, staring blankly at the wall thinking that actually he was three years old and no one else knew it except for him. Maybe Dr Gary as well.

When he heard the ding on his phone about twenty minutes later, he scrambled off his bed, tripped over his blanket, swore again and rushed into the living area. He grabbed his phone and stared at the message.

_We can catch up in another two weeks,_ Gwyn had written. _Can’t believe you apologised._

Efnisien’s heart beat even harder now. He bounced on the balls of his feet and had no idea what to write back.

_Thank you,_ Efnisien wrote eventually. _And yeah, it’s been on my mind. I know it doesn’t make up for anything, and you have every right to be angry and upset with me forever. Just thought I should say it. I’ll say it as often as you need. See you when I see you._

Gwyn sent back a thumbs up emoji.

It was done. It was done and Gwyn hadn’t called him and interrogated him over the request to visit two weeks later.

Six weeks without seeing Gwyn!

It shouldn’t have made him excited. It shouldn’t. There was a time when his whole life had revolved entirely around Gwyn, and he felt like he was breaking a rule by no longer feeling that way. As he sat there, his phone on the table as he leaned over it, he realised he felt a little freer than he did before.

He took a huge breath, then decided to make some rice in the rice cooker with the extra energy that he had.

*

Late Tuesday afternoon, Efnisien sat in his chair in Dr Gary’s office. Within minutes he was talking about catching up with Arden, how he’d had a few days of things being fairly steady – along with grudgingly admitting that the emoji system with Arden was kind of working out – and then he talked about the texts he’d sent to Gwyn.

‘And so like, then I apologised to him for everything that I did – I mean it was a text apology so it can only be so good, right? It wasn’t that great. But he said I could have the two weeks! He was really good about it!’

‘You apologised to him?’ Dr Gary said. He sounded genuinely surprised.

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said. He pulled out his phone and brought up the conversation. ‘Here, you can read it if you want.’

‘Thank you,’ Dr Gary said, reaching for the phone. Their fingers never touched, but Efnisien still felt his skin crawl when Dr Gary got anywhere near him. He hated it because it wasn’t even Dr Gary’s fault. But having any psych get close to him made him want to bolt. Even when he settled back in his chair, his chest was tense.

Dr Gary scrolled through the text messages far longer than he needed to read them. After a couple of minutes he handed the phone back.

‘You’re making me nervous, Doc,’ Efnisien said, after Dr Gary didn’t say anything.

Dr Gary smiled faintly, but looked like he was deep in thought. After a moment he seemed to collect himself. ‘I’m impressed that you managed an apology that was real and not rote, but I’m not going to deny that I’m surprised. Have you wanted to apologise to him in the past?’

‘Yeah,’ Efnisien said, putting his phone back in his pocket. ‘Yeah. And animals, too.’

‘Animals?’ Dr Gary said, that faint hint of surprise still there.

‘What?’ Efnisien said defensively. ‘I’m allowed to want to apologise for shit I did, aren’t I?’

‘Of course,’ Dr Gary said smoothly. ‘I’d like to talk about what’s bringing up the urge to apologise. And what you expect as a result of the apology. Are you pleased with Gwyn’s response? Or were you looking for a more tangible sign of forgiveness?’

‘Why should he forgive me?’ Efnisien said blankly. ‘We’ve talked about this enough times, haven’t we? He has like, literally no reason to. I didn’t do it for that.’

‘What did you do it for?’

‘Because it’s been stressing me out,’ Efnisien said. ‘Which I know, selfish as fuck, right? But when I think about it, I just get…’ He flapped one of his hands rapidly in the air, but couldn’t describe the feeling. ‘I can’t do it in person. Not yet. Not with him. Because I turn into a fucking dickhead around him. But maybe if I practice… Which sounds stupid. But _anyway_ , I didn’t expect- I dunno. I did kind of hope he’d let me have the two weeks off, but not because of the apology. I hoped he’d be better about it because he talked to you, and because I asked him for the time without being as much of a weird asshole about it.’

‘I’d like to talk more about the stress you mentioned. You said it’s been stressing you out. What does that mean?’

‘I just- I don’t know, I think about… I think about some of the stuff I’ve done and I just have to- I get this…’ Efnisien ground his teeth together. He didn’t expect to be running into trouble like this, so early in the session. ‘Goddamn it.’

‘Take your time,’ Dr Gary said. ‘There’s no rush. Where do you feel the tension?’

‘Everywhere,’ Efnisien said, annoyed, then shook his head sharply. ‘No, mostly here.’ He gestured to his chest, and then to his shoulders. He thought it was in his throat too, but for some reason that was too embarrassing to mention.

‘Do you associate it with any intrusive thoughts?’

‘No,’ Efnisien said, confused. ‘It’s just- Like I was walking with Arden at the park, and we saw some ducks, and I’ve like, I’ve killed ducks. And I just wanted to apologise to them. Or _do_ something. But it’s not like they’d understand and it’s not like I can help the ducks that I hurt, so it’s just really frustrating and… Yeah. It’s like that.’

Dr Gary nodded slowly in that way that meant he was listening, but still processing what Efnisien had said.

‘It’s really such a big deal?’ Efnisien said plaintively. ‘I’ve felt bad about shit in the past.’

‘What you’re describing is remorse,’ Dr Gary said. ‘It’s a little different to both guilt and shame. And you’ve certainly shown signs of remorse in the past, but you’re articulating it clearly at the moment. Remorse can be thought of as a distressing feeling or emotion that comes when you accept what you’ve done to hurt another. It causes tension, because it creates an active urge to make reparations of some kind, and to actively avoid engaging in that behaviour in the future.’

Efnisien felt embarrassed by the whole conversation because it really shouldn’t have taken him three years to get to this point, should it? His cheeks flushed.

‘Great,’ he said. ‘I finally graduated to partial human being. Maybe one day, I’ll finally be a real boy.’

‘This is difficult for you to talk about,’ Dr Gary said.

‘No shit,’ Efnisien muttered.

‘Do you think you’re feeling remorse?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said. ‘Probably. Just- Like I want to ask you what the point of it is. I mean obviously it’s got a point. I just can’t…fix anything. Ever. It doesn’t matter what I do. But that doesn’t stop this thing from being there, making me want to do stuff about it.’

‘Are you feeling this way about other people you’ve hurt? Anyone aside from Gwyn?’

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien said again, then closed his eyes. ‘Maybe. It’s not the same. It’s mostly like, Gwyn and animals, and people I know now, like you and Arden and Bridge and stuff. That’s bad, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not bad at all,’ Dr Gary said. ‘There have been signs you’re both capable of feeling remorse and _have_ felt it many times in the past, and have often acted on it without being aware that you’re acting on it. That you can sit here and have a level-headed conversation with me about the emotion of remorse is an important step forward for you. It’s normal to not feel it equally towards everyone you’ve hurt, all at the same time. Remorse can progress in stages and intensity, like any emotion.’

‘Why were you so surprised I apologised to Gwyn?’ Efnisien said. ‘Did you think I was too…? Too damaged or something? That I’d never do it?’

For some reason, that idea made him feel awful.

‘No,’ Dr Gary said. ‘But apologies can be difficult, even if you’re writing them down. While you’ve had no problems being clear in owning the fact you’ve badly hurt people, you’ve rarely connected that to a feeling of wanting to communicate that to them, or do something about it. Yet in your message to Gwyn, you offered opportunities for reparation.’

‘I did?’ Efnisien said.

‘Yes. Your apology unequivocally owned your responsibility for hurting him without making excuses and made it clear that he didn’t have to accept your words. You then offered to apologise to him in person when you were ready, and more importantly, you offered to say it more than once if Gwyn needed that. You opened a door that allows Gwyn to consider what he may want from you in the future – if anything – when it comes to his stance as one of your victims. You did all of this while making it clear that you had boundaries at the same time.’

‘And so…you didn’t think I could do that. And that surprised you.’

‘Does that make you uncomfortable?’ Dr Gary asked.

‘I mean, yeah,’ Efnisien said, looking away. ‘I’ve been coming here long enough, haven’t I? This didn’t come out of nowhere, did it?’

Dr Gary was silent and Efnisien felt like he was trying to think of a diplomatic way to say that it _had_ come out of nowhere and that Efnisien was generally a dickface the rest of the time. He picked at the armrest in agitation.

‘I thought we would be some sessions beforehand where we broached the idea of apologising, and what that might look like for you,’ Dr Gary said. ‘For no other reason than I’d made an assumption, and it was an incorrect one. I think I’ve not realised how eloquent you can be when you write something down. Would you ever feel open to writing down how you’re feeling, or what you’re thinking in session, and then letting me read it?’

‘God,’ Efnisien said, because that felt terrible.

But Dr Gary was right. Efnisien felt way more able to articulate himself in a text message or on paper, and it was one of the reasons he liked the audio transcription so much as a job. Not because he was articulating his own feelings or thoughts, but because he could touch base with the part of himself that didn’t have to speak out loud, but could still communicate.

‘Maybe,’ he said finally.

‘All right, thank you for considering it,’ Dr Gary said. ‘We won’t use that often, or maybe not even at all. I do think it’s important for you to learn how to express yourself verbally, and you’re often very good at it. But there is a disconnect between what you say aloud, and what you put down on paper, or in this case, in a text message. I wanted to talk about something else you brought up – you mentioned feeling remorse around animals. Is this frequent?’

‘Like most times I see an animal,’ Efnisien said, shrugging. ‘It’s really bad around Isabelle. You know, Arden’s dog? Like, I want to pat her so badly, but then I worry I’m going to suddenly hurt her. And then I also feel like I don’t deserve to pat her after everything I’ve done to dogs and puppies. Like, it’s not fair to them. That I get to do this now. And then I don’t know what to do, like I’m stuck. Because I can’t… I can’t help that…’

As he listened to himself a wave of panic blew into him so suddenly he felt it recoil through his body. He leaned forward and sucked down a breath. Pressure surrounded him from every angle.

‘Efnisien?’

‘She’d hate me for this,’ Efnisien choked out. ‘You don’t understand. She’d hate me for this. This isn’t me. This isn’t the way I’m supposed to be. This isn’t me.’

He felt dizzy. She was there somehow. He wanted to make himself small so that she couldn’t see him and look down on him with that disappointment on her face.

‘It’s not me,’ he said. ‘I can’t be this. It’s wrong.’

‘What’s not you?’ Dr Gary said.

‘ _This!’_ Efnisien shouted at his knees, then gestured to himself. ‘Whatever the fuck this is! I’m not supposed to feel this way, I’m not supposed to even know how! It’s wrong!’

‘Efnisien,’ Dr Gary said, his voice gentle now. ‘Do you remember when we had that session, and we focused on the shape of that feeling that was stopping you from feeling remorse about hurting other people?’

Efnisien frowned. He couldn’t concentrate. He was breathing too fast, but he still cast his mind back to that session. He remembered Dr Gary asking him about the nothingness he felt, to put it out of him. He remembered the black and grey shape he’d shoved out into the street and how what had initially felt like lazy apathy had begun to feel like anything but…

_Oh._

‘You said it felt protective,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Do you think it was trying to protect you from this?’

Efnisien listened to the way his breaths fell out of his chest. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Crielle was in the room, then _had_ to look around to check. He looked behind him. It was impossible, she couldn’t be there, and yet she’d know somehow. She’d _know._

‘She’s going to know,’ Efnisien rasped out. ‘She’ll know.’

‘What will she know, Efnisien?’

‘It’s not allowed.’ His fingers straightened, flexing, then stretching to their limits, splaying as the tension spidered out into his hands and his feet.

‘Feeling remorse? Having a response like this to what you did?’

A trapdoor opened above Efnisien’s head. Slivers of bright, discordant, jarring images and words and feelings all fell in together, at once. It was like his mind tried to play ten different films, multiple different radio stations. He lost all awareness of Dr Gary’s office.

Through it all, a building terror. Crielle’s voice, persuasive and warm, yet utterly chilling. He couldn’t make out what she was saying. He couldn’t tell what she was doing.

‘She’s doing something,’ he said, but his words felt locked up in himself, and he wasn’t even sure if he said them aloud. He felt like he was speaking underwater, or through a pillow.

‘What is Crielle doing?’

‘I don’t know,’ Efnisien moaned. ‘I can’t tell.’

Had she done something? Something else? Efnisien couldn’t grasp at the images. One moment they were there, crushing him down, and the next they’d fallen all the way through him, cutting him like glass, and he couldn’t even reach down into the dark to grab them. His body was way too big for how small he felt. The terror lingered.

_‘My darling, my little man, you have to be honest with me. Do you feel bad? Look at what you did, my darling. The evil is all the way through you. But you still feel bad?’_

_‘I don’t know, Mama.’_

_‘Don’t lie to me.’_

_‘Y-yes, Mama.’_

_‘If you’re going to stutter, don’t speak at all.’_

_Her voice clipped off, and Efnisien had to suck in a breath and then-_

Efnisien stared into darkness, and then it picked up again, just her voice, her presence, and Efnisien couldn’t even see the memory. Her voice was distorted, sometimes too loud, sometimes too soft. He could hear his pulse in his ears. _Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh._

_‘We can chase down the part of you that doesn’t belong and kill it. Think of it like a game. We’re going to find the part of you that’s trying to be a sheep, and we’re going to torture it until it can’t come out anymore. We’re going to make it die, and then you’ll be stronger than ever. Would you like that?’_

_No, Mama._

_‘My darling, think carefully about your answer.’_

Something was holding him. His arm hurt, his waist. He couldn’t tell what was causing it. He shifted in the chair, and Dr Gary was there too, saying something, but nothing in the present was as loud as her voice in his head.

_‘Efnisien? If you don’t answer, I’m going to be cross.’_

_‘What do you want, Mama?’_

_‘I want to make you become your very best self.’_

_‘I want that too, Mama.’_

_It was the only truth he had left when she demanded his honesty. But he was afraid. The pain increased, and he couldn’t tell…_

And then he was sitting in Dr Gary’s office, listening to himself whisper: ‘I’m just a sheep. I’m just a sheep, I’m just a sheep...’

Over and over again.

He blinked and looked up at Dr Gary in confusion, and then realised his mouth was dry and reached for the glass of water that was there, even though he had the water bottle in his satchel. Dr Gary was watching him with concern, but his fingers weren’t up like he’d snapped them at any point.

Efnisien felt like he’d survived an earthquake.

After sipping until half of the water in the glass was gone, he held the glass to his chest and stared at the rug.

‘I’m not supposed to feel this way,’ Efnisien said, his voice croaky, like he’d been shouting. But he hadn’t been, it was just that stupid shallow, hard breathing, his stupid throat closing up. ‘But I obviously do. So what she did, it didn’t work anyway.’

‘What did she do, Efnisien?’ Dr Gary asked softly. It was his ‘kid gloves’ voice, and Efnisien almost wanted to cry, but he felt too numb.

He smiled a little, shrugged. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘All right,’ Dr Gary said. ‘But you know she did something?’

Efnisien nodded, then finished off the water. He was nauseated. Ghosts of pain echoed through him. He had no idea what it was. Like his stomach sometimes, but all over.

‘You know,’ Efnisien said, feeling too exhausted to care about what he said. ‘I was talking to Arden about Crielle when we were at Kadek’s. I forgot to tell you, because y’know…Bridge. But I was telling him that Crielle helped me be more charming, and picked my clothes, and made me better. And I said that Crielle had ways of letting me know that she didn’t like how I was being. And Arden just said – like it was so easy for him to say – that she just didn’t like _me.’_

Dr Gary was quiet, and Efnisien’s breathing shuddered as he clutched the glass to himself.

‘I got really defensive,’ Efnisien said, laughing darkly. ‘I always do, right? It’s very predictable. I can’t help it. And so Arden backed right off. But it stuck with me. You’ve never said that, but do you think it’s true? Do you think she didn’t like me?’

When he looked up, Dr Gary had his lips pressed together, and his expression was grim. He looked like someone who had bad news to share and didn’t want to share it.

‘Right,’ Efnisien said bitterly. ‘What, you’ve been sitting on that one for three years? She _loved_ me.’

‘As I have said in the past,’ Dr Gary said, ‘she loved you as much as she was capable of loving anyone.’

Efnisien almost heard the: _And you drew your own conclusions,_ at the end of it.

‘I don’t get why it’s so bad to feel bad about the things I did,’ Efnisien said. ‘Like I get that it’s not _fun._ I get that it doesn’t feel _good._ But I don’t get why it’s such a bad, awful thing to feel bad about it. I don’t get why that part of me was meant to die.’

‘Did she tell you that it was bad and awful?’ Dr Gary said. ‘Did she say that part of you was meant to die?’

‘And we did such a good job that you didn’t even think I could apologise to my own fucking cousin!’ Efnisien’s voice had started out quiet, but it finished loud, and then he was glaring at Dr Gary and unsure why he felt so frustrated in the first place. ‘It wasn’t that hard, you know? It was stressful but it wasn’t like I needed someone to fucking hold my hand through it! What did you think would happen, Doc? That I’d one day wake up and realise I’ve done all these terrible things and I’d decompensate, and you’d trot me off to Hillview again?’

‘I did not think that,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Why are you angry with me for being surprised at your apology to Gwyn?’

A rush of rage in response to that question, and Efnisien’s hands clenched into fists. One around the glass, the other where he was digging his fingernails into his palm.

‘Do you think she didn’t like me?’ Efnisien said.

‘Do you think she didn’t like you?’

‘Answer my question!’ Efnisien shouted.

‘I will, in a minute. Right now, I’m more interested in your answer. I think right now you’re more interested in having me talk, instead of saying something you may be afraid to say.’

Efnisien felt a brief flash of betrayal that Dr Gary put it so baldly, and then he carefully put the glass down on Dr Gary’s desk because he didn’t trust himself not to hurl it at the wall and that would definitely be a whole lot of regression compared to even throwing the hardback book in the last session. And he didn’t want to keep doing shit like that.

‘How do you think Crielle felt about you?’ Dr Gary said.

‘She loved me,’ Efnisien said hoarsely. ‘She said so all the time.’

Sometimes she said he was almost impossible to love, but then she told him how he could fix it. And that meant he could always be worthy of her if he just worked hard enough.

‘Do you think Crielle liked you? Like and love are two different things. It’s possible for someone to love a family member, but not like them very much, or trust them, and so on.’

‘I think she saw that I had potential,’ Efnisien said.

‘If you think about it, the answer to the question: ‘Do you think Crielle liked you?’ really only needs a yes or no answer,’ Dr Gary said. Efnisien ground his teeth together.

‘I hate you,’ Efnisien said.

‘Perhaps we could try another question, a little different. I know you love her very much, Efnisien. But do you _like_ Crielle?’

Efnisien shuddered, goosebumps prickled all over his skin. A cold shiver all the way from his spine outwards. These were dangerous questions. Life or death questions. And he kind of understood that she wasn’t there anymore, she didn’t give a shit about him, she’d already tried to kill him so what did it matter anyway?

But it didn’t stop his response.

‘I can’t answer that,’ Efnisien said.

‘Why not?’ Dr Gary asked, his voice all kid glove soft again, like he wasn’t being a complete asshole. _Again._

There had to be a manlier way of saying that he was scared, but he couldn’t think of what it was.

‘She’ll be mad,’ Efnisien whispered.

_No, you fucking moron, that’s not manlier, you absolute goddamn piece of shit._

‘I know she’s not around,’ Efnisien said desperately. ‘I _know_ that.’

‘Sometimes what we know objectively, or logically, isn’t strong enough to overpower how we feel,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Is that also why feeling remorse can be challenging? She’ll be mad at you?’

‘The remorse part – if that’s what it is – that part is easy,’ Efnisien said dully. ‘That part is just there. But… It’s like she’s here. Watching. And I c-can’t- It’s like I have to make it up to her, somehow. Like what if I’m nice to Isabelle, or I apologise to someone, or do something…not awful, and then I have to do something even worse because of it?’

‘Can she make you do that?’ Dr Gary said.

‘She could,’ Efnisien said, looking up at Dr Gary.

Dr Gary looked concerned, but it wasn’t the kind of concern that meant he thought Efnisien was about to go outside and hurt someone. It was different. Efnisien thought it was pretty shameful that he wanted someone to be concerned about him.

‘Was that something that happened in the past?’ Dr Gary said.

‘If she caught me,’ Efnisien said, and then his ears flushed hot and he ducked his head. ‘I mean- I’m not… I wouldn’t…’

And now he felt terrible because it made him remember the times he’d been disobedient, the times he hadn’t done exactly what she wanted. And he was supposed to be doing his very best for her. How the fuck could he call himself devoted to her when he broke the rules sometimes? No wonder she tried to kill him, he’d been betraying her in pieces until he did it all at once at the end.

‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ he said fiercely, feeling like actually it mattered a _fuckton,_ but he was tired of listening to himself. ‘She’s not around anymore. It’s just feelings.’

Dr Gary took a breath and then exhaled audibly. Efnisien could feel a door in his body closing on a whole bunch of stuff that had run through him like a train careening off its tracks.

‘You know,’ Efnisien said flatly, ‘I don’t know whether I liked her or not. That never really mattered very much. But I’m beginning to think she didn’t like me. And if that’s true, then like, no one did.’

He’d thought he was too numb to feel the impact of those words, but he wasn’t. Something in him broke, and though he didn’t know what it was, or why it mattered, he knew he’d lost something vital. Something in him had fallen apart, and it wasn’t going to come back.

‘I’m sorry, Efnisien,’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien would normally look up at something like that, but he couldn’t be bothered.

He didn’t even know if Dr Gary liked him. It wasn’t like Dr Gary had to like him for them to be able to do this work together. And he wasn’t going to fucking ask, because Dr Gary probably felt obligated to say whatever he thought Efnisien most needed to hear.

But that meant probably Arden was the first person to actually like him for who he was.

No wonder Dr Gary was worried about Efnisien being too dependent on him.

He ran through what he imagined happening next in his mind. Dr Gary asking him how he was feeling, and Efnisien saying he felt like killing himself. And then he realised he’d have to lie, because he couldn’t say that to Dr Gary, because he felt like he’d take that super seriously. At least right now.

‘I imagine you don’t feel great right now,’ Dr Gary said.

Efnisien could’ve punched him for it.

‘Efnisien, in some way, in some form, you’ve had these feelings all your life. You’ve worked incredibly hard, and you’ve been incredibly clever – even as a child – at finding ways to wall them out so that you could continue to survive.’

‘Oh, so I’m meant to feel like I want to die then? _Great.’_

‘Is that how you feel?’

Efnisien shrugged.

‘Wanting to make reparations for what you’ve done directly contravenes the person that Crielle tormented you into being, that you forced yourself to become. Remorse is already a form of distress, it is defined as an emotion of distress, it creates tension, and it creates action. But alongside it, you have a great deal more distress to deal with. Anything connected to the emotion of remorse directly threatens the stability you required as a child and a teenager, because that stability was connected to believing you were the person that Crielle wanted you to be. An irredeemable monster, incapable of empathy.’

Efnisien felt like he’d completely lost control of all of this like a year ago. Maybe two. There was a time when he had this shit locked up tight. Where if Dr Gary so much as mentioned Crielle, Efnisien would _walk._

How the fuck did they get here? To the point where Dr Gary felt safe enough to talk to him like this?

‘I don’t think now’s the time to tell you how strong and capable I think you are,’ Dr Gary continued, ‘or how impressed I am with your progress, though all those things are true. Instead, I’d like to ask you to just stay with this feeling for a moment, and then we’ll move onto something else.’

‘Something else?’ Efnisien said incredulously. ‘Are you serious? You think…? What I’m just going to flip a switch and be _fine?’_

‘No,’ Dr Gary said. ‘I don’t think that. I don’t think there’s a point in your entire life – just about – where you’ve ever been fine. The consequences to your core being in trying to find stability with someone like Crielle, were catastrophic. But I _do_ think you’re going to be able to keep on going, as you’ve kept on going in the past.’

‘You just want me all better so you don’t have to see me anymore,’ Efnisien said, and though he was aware the words were pathetic, he couldn’t stop himself from saying them. ‘You just want me gone already. I’ve gone to a group, I’ve met a guy, so we’re done. I’ve realised Crielle didn’t like me, I feel like shit, I don’t want to do bad things anymore, the end.’

‘I don’t think that at all,’ Dr Gary said patiently. ‘I’m not going to stop our sessions, and in many respects, much of our journey is just beginning. Why do you imagine that I wouldn’t want to see you anymore?’

‘Look at me, failing at sitting with the emotions that you wanted me to sit with.’

‘Well, it’s not like this will be the last opportunity,’ Dr Gary said wryly. ‘Why do you imagine that I want to stop seeing you?’

‘Everyone just puts up with me until I become whatever version of me they want me to be,’ Efnisien said dully.

Saying that made something twist all up and down his spine, and he resisted the urge to press back against the chair. He’d gone still. He wondered what Henton wanted him to become.

‘I can really, really understand why you’d feel that way,’ Dr Gary said quietly. ‘And I think it will be understandable if you feel that way around other people for a long time to come. But I’m invested in you as my client, and I’m not merely tolerating you. Nor am I trying to make you become something I want you to be. My job is to facilitate your healing process, and to help guide you into becoming who _you_ want to be. Yes, I use particular techniques to assist with that, but you know yourself best, Efnisien.’

‘I don’t know who I am at all,’ Efnisien said, looking up at Dr Gary.

‘Well,’ Dr Gary said, tilting his head. ‘We know that you’re someone who has a strong sense of duty and responsibility to his commitments, whether it’s always turning up to these sessions five minutes early, to the work you do for the university. We know that you’re someone who likes to read non-fiction on a wide variety of subjects, and that you are curious and interested, and insightful about the things you read. We know that you’ve done hurtful and criminal things in the past, until you decided you didn’t want to do them anymore, and since then you’ve been actively exploring your capacity for other emotions. Compassion, empathy, remorse, and a greater engagement with the world around you. You’re the kind of person who will save a snail, but who will still throw books because he’s learning how to safely express his anger, and who will clean the leaves of a plant because he imagined the plant would feel better that way.’

Efnisien looked down at the plant automatically, and then back to Dr Gary. He didn’t know what to say.

‘Does that make me a person?’ he said.

‘You were already a person,’ Dr Gary said. ‘Do you think that makes you a person?’

‘No,’ Efnisien whispered.

‘That’s all right,’ Dr Gary said. ‘We’ll keep working on it. Now, let’s talk about the relationship between remorse and making reparations, and what that might mean for you going into the future. It’s better to brainstorm a list of things you feel capable of doing, or thinking of doing, than to simply feel like you _should_ do something, without knowing what. You mentioned feeling stuck, and this is something that’s possible to unstick. It won’t resolve the distress that remorse causes, and part of owning what you did, is accepting that you may feel this way for the rest of your life. But first, I want to talk about what might – theoretically – be a step forward with remorse, that feels less destabilising for you.’

Efnisien opened his mouth, then closed it again. He didn’t know if he should feel disgusted with himself that all it took was Dr Gary saying some not awful things about him, and he didn’t feel as terrible anymore. Dr Gary just had to say something that made it sound like Efnisien could be okay sometimes, and Efnisien thought he’d die for the guy. Like he would just…follow anyone who was nice to him.

_You’d do that anyway, idiot._

Efnisien took a slow breath and then forced himself to nod.

‘I think we’re going to start with Isabelle,’ Dr Gary said, smiling. ‘Let’s talk about how there is absolutely zero benefit from you punishing yourself by not letting yourself learn how to pat her – with Arden’s consent of course – but that there could be considerable benefit to you learning about dogs and what they like and enjoy.’

‘Huh?’ Efnisien said, staring at him.

Dr Gary smiled in that enigmatic way he had sometimes, and then began to share his thoughts. Efnisien felt like the session had fallen on top of him like bits of jagged granite, and he felt bruised from the inside out. And though he was very interested in what Dr Gary had to say, he was _so_ going to send Arden one of those thunderstorm emojis once he got out of the session.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Princess Efnisien](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26351353) by [CathyFowl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CathyFowl/pseuds/CathyFowl)




End file.
